Seeing Black
by Lysa-uk
Summary: What if Warren hadn't killed Tara, but someone else instead? An AU end to Season 6.
1. Chapter One

Title: Seeing Black

Author: Lysa-uk

Rating: PG-13

Distribution: If you want it, ask first, and you can have it.

Feedback: Is Nicholas Brendon hot? (In case you're wondering, the answer to the question is an almighty 'Yes!')

Summary: What if Warren's bullet hadn't hit Tara and killed someone else instead?

Spoilers: Very much Season 6

Notes: Okay, so I had this idea a long time ago. I was watching the end of season 6, and because I'm such a huge Willow/Xander 'shipper, I had to think... 'Hmm, what if...' and that's pretty much where this came from. Before anyone starts telling me that this is just the last three episodes of s6, they'd be partially right. I have a lot of scenes from the episodes because it's what I think needed to be there to be able to look at the story in broader terms. I've left things in because it made more sense than to take them out and just refer to them, but I have added a lot of my own work to it. I've changed certain dialogue, added extra scenes and made one or two minor differences. I've been working on this for a few months and is pretty much the longest fic I've ever finished, but please, if you start to get bored, I promise there's a few bits in there that are different to what was on screen. Wow, my note blurbs are kinda turning into essays.

Dedication: To Amanda: The Best Friend A Girl Can Have. Thank you for all of your help, and if you don't quit dreaming about Nick, I'll have to kick your ass and I'll take Nathan!

* * *

The bedroom was warm, sunlight streaming in through the glass of the window in the Summers house, whose population, according to Buffy, was pretty much everyone she knew. It was light and airy, which was significantly appropriate to Willow Rosenberg right now, and it felt like the reason for it was Tara's presence there with her.

The irony didn't escape Willow that while Tara had been gone, life had been dark and hard and wrong, but with her...it was all floating on air and cotton candy. She felt like she could handle anything.

She basked in the glow of being back in Couple Land, vowing never to return to the unhappy vacation spot of Solitude Island. The sight of Tara in her room again, after such a long absence, filled her with an inner calm she couldn't explain and she silently wondered when exactly would be the best time to ask the other girl to move back into the house with her. She didn't want to rush her back into the relationship, even after the blissful few days they had recently spent together. She didn't want to stifle her, to suffocate her with her feelings, but she needed her to know that this was where they were supposed to be – together. Nothing seemed right when they were apart.

"Hmm," Willow said as she pulled on a white shirt with the sun on her back, concentrated by the windowpane, warming her through and through. "Hey," she said with a smile at Tara. "Clothes."

Tara smiled back in a way that made Willow melt. "Better not get used to 'em," she purred.

Willow purposely leant forward, taking hold of the belt tab in Tara's jeans and pulled the other girl toward her. "Yes, Ma'am," she said as she put her arms around her and kissed her, the feeling soft and sweet and completely loving, enveloping her in a comforting, familiar cocoon.

Tara sighed contentedly as their lips parted and they hugged tenderly. "Xander," she said matter-of-factly, looking out of the window.

"Okay," Willow said playfully with a grin playing on her lips that she doubted would ever leave as she left the comfort of her girlfriend's arms and crossed over to the other side of the room to her dresser. "Not quite the response I was fishing for."

"No, he's here," Tara said with a smile, watching Xander from their second floor window, giving her a birds-eye view of the yard below, seeing him walk slowly across the lawn to where Buffy was standing in the small garden.

"You think they're making up?" Willow asked hopefully.

"I hope so," Tara said, a grin full of innuendo and intention, as she turned to her girlfriend, completely glowing in the morning sun. "That's the best part."

* * *

Buffy used the stick she had found in her yard to poke at the flowerbeds her mother had planted when they had first come to Sunnydale, carefully trying not to destroy the fauna as she checked the landscape, looking for anything suspicious or left behind by the Geeks. Or possibly the Nerds. She still hadn't quite decided which was more fitting for the Trio of Freaks that had made her life worse these past few months.

Xander stood behind her, nervously and uncomfortably stuffing his hands in the pockets of his pants. "Time for the spring poking already?" he asked.

Buffy turned around to look at him, his face older than she remembered before, but then, they had all been through a lot lately and a slap in the face of guilt hit her that she had only contributed to it, been part of it, not made it better. "Just making sure there are no more evil Trio cameras," she told him. "Or, evil Uno," she added.

"The sinister yet addictive card game?" he asked.

"Warren," she told him with a shrug. "Jonathon and Andrew got clinked, but... Warren pulled a Rocket Man. It was a thing."

"You'll find him," Xander said sincerely. "He won't be much good without his friends."

"No," she agreed softly, his words hitting home, maybe more than she'd intended. "He won't."

Awkwardly, both uncomfortable, they let a silence develop between them as they unconsciously moved to the wooden bench on the lawn, sitting opposite one another.

The first few moments were so permeated with tension that it was like they were strangers to one another. Buffy strangely thought back a few years, back to Xander asking her to accompany him to the dance and her declining, the atmosphere much like it had been then. She wished that were all that was standing between them now. But somehow, she knew that it was going to take more than a drowning and a resuscitation to build bridges.

Fortunately for the thoughtful Slayer, Xander was the first to speak. "How did we get here?" he asked softly.

"Scenic route," Buffy said with a shrug, trying to ease the tension between them. She was glad that he was opening the conversation, because she was sure she didn't know where to start. "Long Drive."

"The past few weeks..." he began.

"I know," she agreed, her eyes suddenly unable to meet his.

"I thought I hit bottom, but...it hurt," he told her, his voice full of emotion and sincerity. "That you didn't trust me enough to tell me about Spike. It hurt."

"I'm sorry," she apologised, meaning every word. "I should have told you." And she knew she should have, but telling someone else about the vampire would have meant that it was real, and she hadn't been ready to accept what she had done until she had to, for the sake of her friendships.

"Maybe you would have," he said, "if I hadn't given you so many reasons to think I'd be an ass about it."

"I guess we've all done a lot of things lately we're not proud of," she said thoughtfully.

"I think I've got you beat."

"Wanna compare?" she asked, the smallest of smiles on her face.

"Not so much," he said with a sad smile. His face became serious again, his eyes filling with tears, hoping the feeling he had inside was their friendship rebuilding itself, because he needed his two best friends more than anything else in the world. "I don't know what I'd do...without you and Will..." he told her honestly.

"Let's not find out," she said, her own eyes filling up as she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly. "I love you," she told him desperately. "You know that, right?"

Xander finally allowed himself to let go of all of his anger and pain as a tear made its way down his cheek, the relief palpable on his face.

The sound of the gate into the yard being opened caught his attention, and from where he was sitting, still hugging his friend, he saw a furious figure enter the yard. "Buffy!" he said, his eyes wide in horror as he extricated himself from her embrace. He hurried to his feet, Buffy immediately on the defensive when she saw Warrens battered and humiliated face, full of rage from their last encounter.

"You think you can just do that to me?" Warren yelled at them, looking incredibly like one of the lunatics Buffy remembered from her brief spell in the lunatic asylum – courtesy of Warren and his pals. He stood in the shade of the house, determined but deliberately not getting too close to his foe in case she kicked his ass again.

"You think I'd let you get away with that?" he yelled angrily, his face contorted in fury as he began to laugh maniacally. "Think again..." he said as he pulled out a black automatic handgun, opening fire with a violence that seemed to surprise even him, the noise deafening as the bullets exploded from the muzzle.

Buffy felt herself falling to the ground, unsure of how and why, and, as her head hit the ground, the gunshots still permeating the air around her, there were a few seconds when she couldn't move, couldn't hear or think, and couldn't remember. Then, slowly, in moments that felt like hours, she felt herself regain her senses, and as she lifted her head, she caught a glimpse of Warren fleeing her yard, gun in hand.

* * *

With her girlfriend's back to the warm rays of the sun, Willow thought that Tara reminded her of an Angel – the ones she'd seen depicted in books she'd used for researching over the years. The archetypal glow around her, the innocent, sweet smile, and the aura she had around her that looked like a halo. She couldn't resist that look in Tara's eyes that conveyed everything she was feeling, and when she leant forward, ready to gorge herself on Tara's kisses, she wondered how she could be so happy.

But, as her lover began to respond in kind, there was a noise, or a series of noises, something that chilled her to her very core, and instinct made her pull Tara out of the sun, just as something broke through the window.

"Your shirt..." Tara said as she hit the ground with a hard thud, Willow landing next to her.

"Tara..." Willow said worriedly, the adrenalin coursing through her body as she sat up quickly and grabbed the other girl in a crushing hug. "God, Tara, baby, are you alright?"

Tara smiled, shocked but safe in Willow's arms, and nodded emphatically. "Yeah," she told her. "I-I-I'm fine," she said. "I mean, I think I hit the deck pretty hard, but okay," she said. She looked at the hole made in the pane of glass, a deep concern on her face. "What the hell was that?" she asked, but didn't give Willow time to respond as she felt the damp patch on her sweater where Willow had held her, a dark red stain growing on the white shirt Willow had only put on a few minutes ago. "You're hurt!" she yelled at the bewildered redhead.

"I'm fine," Willow said, not feeling anything until she looked down and saw the rapidly spreading blood stain at her shoulder, and the tiny hole that seemed to be exuding an impossibly large amount of fluid and found herself suddenly feeling faint. "Or not..."

* * *

Buffy cricked her neck as she got to her feet, shaking off the last remnants of what she suspected might have been a concussion if it hadn't been for the slayer constitution. "I always said those things were never helpful," she said to herself, brushing the grass and dirt from her clothes. "Where the hell did he..." she trailed off as she looked around for Xander.

When she saw him lying on the floor, the first thought she had was that he was being lazy, because she had learned from experience that that boy would find any excuse to do as little as possible and sleep. She waited for him to make some kind of joke so she could yank him up and make him drive her to find the psycho nerd, with a promise of ice cream as a reward.

But she couldn't see him moving. She couldn't see the rise and fall of his breathing that she was sure was supposed to be erratic after having someone wave a gun around in the air a few yards in front of them. She knew there was something terribly wrong by the terrible icy feeling that gripped her heart like a tightening vice.

"Oh, god..." she said quietly, her hand flying to her open mouth when she stood over him. Then, like someone flicked a switch or pressed a button on the VCR remote control of her brain, something in her mind showed her the events of the last few minutes.

The hug...Warren and the gun...the shots...falling to the ground...

When she thought hard, struggled to focus on the memory, tried to feel his essence when he had touched her, she saw Xander putting himself in the path of the speeding bullet, saw him pushing her to the ground to get her out of the way.

Maybe it was a sense memory that was triggering the events in her head, or maybe it was some sort of advanced Slayer power she hadn't been able to develop before, or maybe it was because she knew him so well, but she saw it clearly now.

There was a steely determination in his eyes that she hadn't really seen before. Determination that she wouldn't die again, and especially not at the hands of such a waste of space. Determination that this time he'd save her, because he'd always felt guilty that he hadn't been able to before. Determination that Sunnydale and the world wouldn't be deprived of a Slayer, that Dawn wouldn't be without her sister, that Willow wouldn't feel that devastation she'd gone through before and gotten herself lost in the Magick. But he didn't spare a thought for himself at all.

As if in slow motion, everything was clear in her mind, and the moments replayed themselves in her mind.

She saw him being shot.

* * *

"Willow?" Tara said, instant panic at the sight of the blood, grabbing Willow's injured arm and trying to get a better look at the wound. "Sweetie?" she said, trembling with shock as she put a hand to the hole in her shoulder and pressed against it, trying to stem the flow of blood. "Are you okay?"

Willow fought the urge to close her eyes, even though she could feel her eyelashes grazing her cheek softly for longer and longer periods of time each time she blinked, suddenly feeling very tired. "Yeah," she said slowly. "I mean, I think I've been shot, but..." she trailed off and her eyes widened as she felt Tara lift her other hand and put it to the wound in place of hers. "I think...I think something's wrong..." she told her, her breathing shallow and quick.

"It's okay," Tara told her, reaching up onto the bed they had fallen next to and furiously grabbing for the blanket that lay on top of it. "It'll be okay, sweetie," she said, pulling the blanket down, bundling the material up, pulling Willow's hand away from her shoulder and pressing the blanket to the source of the blood loss.

"No," Willow said, "It won't." When she saw Tara's eyes widen in fright, she put her hand on hers. "I mean, **I'm** okay, it's just...something feels...wrong..."

Tara leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on her lips to silence her, touching Willow's face tenderly. "We need to get you to a hospital," she told her. "You shouldn't be thinking about this now. Whatever it is, it'll be okay." She glanced around the room, looking for the phone. "We probably shouldn't move you," she said thoughtfully. "We should probably talk to Buffy and Xander and..."

Before she could finish the sentence, Willow was gone. All she saw was the trail of blood left behind her that led out of the door.

* * *

"Oh, god..." Buffy whispered tearfully as she carefully knelt next to Xander, ignoring what she'd heard so many times and turning his body over so that he was face up, so she could look at him, to see his wide, playful eyes that held so much love. But she didn't see that. His eyes were closed, and she knew that behind the heavy lids, they were empty, the light and laughter gone.

"Xander?" she said softly, her arm under his head. "Xander, come on," she told him, taking the hand that lay still on the lawn next to him. "It's me, Buffy," she said. "Please, just open your eyes..."

"Buffy!" Willow cried, bursting out of the back door and running across the yard to reach where he lay, falling to her knees beside him. "What happened?" she asked, tears falling down her cheeks like she wasn't even aware of them.

"Warren," Buffy told her. "He had a gun." She watched Willow carefully touching his cheek and felt the hope draining from her. "Will," she said quietly, still holding his other hand. "I don't think he's breathing..."

"No," Willow said, almost to herself. "He's okay..." she said quietly, tightly holding Xander's hand in her own. "He's okay... He has to be..." She used her free hand to brush the hair from his forehead, and looked down at his chest. There, a tiny hole, probably about the same size as the one in her shoulder, in the place where his heart was.

"Xander!" she yelled at him, terrified when there seemed to be so little blood compared to her wound, oblivious to the fact that his heart had stopped beating the second the bullet had hit it, stopping it from pumping the vital life force around his body. "Xander, come on!"

Buffy looked across at her friend, saw the blood at her shoulder and did a double take. "Willow, you're bleeding," she said, shocked.

"That doesn't matter," she snapped at Buffy, not looking away from Xander's body on the ground. "Nothing does."

Having followed the trail of blood from Willow's wound to the back door of the house, Tara looked out at the yard. "Willow!" she yelled. "You need to come inside. You're hurt." When Willow didn't respond to her, just remained kneeling on the ground opposite Buffy, she ran across to them, oblivious at first to the body until she was closer. "Oh, my god..." she said as she reached them, her voice breaking the tension. "Is he...?"

"Tara," Buffy said, looking up at her. "Call an ambulance."

Tara backed away from them, her face paling with the sight of someone she knew lying on the ground, unmoving. "O-o-okay," she managed to get out, before she turned and ran back inside of the house.

Willow felt herself give in to the sobs she had been trying to keep at bay, and used her arms to scoop up the body of her best friend, laying his head on her knees and bending down to touch his face. "Xander?" she asked. "Xander, please," she begged, stroking his hair softly, urging him with everything that she was to open his eyes. "Get up," she told him, sobbing, her head hung down in devastation, watching the blood pouring out of her own body, seeping out of her shoulder wound and running into his bloodless one. "No..." she whispered, not feeling any kind of response from him. "No..." she said again. "No..."

Anyone watching her, this young girl carefully cradling her dead best friend, watching her rocking them both gently and sobbing, both of their faces partially hidden by her long red hair, might not have noticed when the tears flowing from her with grief and pain quickly changed into those of anger. But when her head flew back, they wouldn't have been able to miss the look of pure fury and rage contorting her features.

No one would have missed it when her eyes turned pure black.


	2. Chapter Two

This wasn't happening, Buffy told herself. It couldn't be.

Things like this - like one of her friends receiving a blow that had been intended for her – only ever happened in her very worst and very frequent nightmares.

This was a new variation, though. Usually it was all dark, sometimes with rain and thunder, and there were demons or vampires. In her dreams she would fight with everything that she was worth to keep them safe, even though in Dream World it never worked. In her darkest dreams, they made her watch while whatever demon or vampire tortured Willow, Dawn Giles or Xander.

But then she'd wake up and everything would be semi-okay. She'd check Willow's room, where she'd be asleep, either wrapped up in Tara's arms or, more recently, on her own. Then, she'd watch Dawn sleep from the end of her bed, and scare the crap out of her when she woke up to go to the bathroom and see her crazy sister stood in the dark, looking like a stalker from a bad horror movie.

At lunch, she'd head over to the building site, and she'd tell Xander about whatever had happened in her dreams. He would laugh it off, and say 'the forces of darkness couldn't get rid of us if their lives depended on it. And they usually do.' Then he'd jump around, yelling 'we are invincible' at the top of his lungs, informing her that's what his favourite comic book characters usually did, and she'd laugh at him, call him a dork, and it would feel a little better.

When the sugar-rush had worn off, he'd tell her that after everything that had happened to them over the years, the Powers that Sucked would have to pull something pretty spectacular out of their hats to get rid of them now.

A good dose of Xander logic would usually quell her fears for the time being, and they'd sit at the very top of the scaffolding in their bright yellow hard hats and drink coffee and he'd scoff the candy bar Willow told her to always carry when visiting Xander, because she said it was fun to see how long it took him to sniff it out from its hiding place.

It was hard to believe that something so tragically mundane and relatively ordinary was happening on such a beautiful, bright morning in a world where the supernatural reigned, happening in a place she felt strongest, and it seemed bizarre to her that the only thing she really thought when she heard the shots was 'huh, so that's what a real gun sounds like'.

This was supposed to be a Slayer's favourite time of the day. When the sun beat down and the birds chirped happily in the trees like a scene right out a fairy tale. Although things had been hard for her in the past few months, Buffy had to admit that the morning held some kind of comfort to her. Everything felt...safe.

She wasn't stupid, she couldn't afford to be, and she wasn't forgetting the daytime slayings she had partaken in on regular occasions. Things didn't stop being evil by the light of the day, however much she wanted to believe it so. But when the sun was shining, she could fool herself into thinking that she was just another typical Southern Californian girl.

Nights were filled with demons and nightmares that pursued her, no matter where she was. Mornings were good, because it meant she had survived another night, and it meant her dreams would fade away with the early morning dew.

That wasn't going to happen **this** morning, though.

Blinking hard, Buffy knew this wasn't a dream.

And one look at Willow...that made her feel more useless and afraid and less like a Slayer than she'd ever experienced in her life.

Buffy wasn't sure if it was the tears at first. She thought that maybe they were clouding her vision, so much so that she was seeing things, and she hurriedly wiped her eyes with her free hand. But when she looked up from the face of her dead best friend, the man lying on the ground, and saw Willow, the girl's head back and eyes black as onyx, she knew there wasn't a mistake.

"Will..." she said unsteadily, carefully placing Xander's cold hand back on the ground like a piece of her grandmothers ancient china, something fragile and delicate, even though she'd always known him as anything but those things. "What's going on?" she asked warily. "What are you doing?"

Willow didn't respond to her, she just looked back down at Xander, shaking his still body gently, sobs catching her in her throat as tears rolled down her face. "Oh, god...oh, no..." she cried. "Please...please, come on..." she said, putting her hands to his face and stroking his skin with her thumbs. "Come on, Xander," she told him. "Please, come on, wake up..."

Buffy stood up slowly, the blackness in Willow's eyes signalling something that was definitely not of the good, and shivered when she felt a definite, unnatural change in the air, a disturbing chill that overcame the warm Californian sun that had been shining not long ago. "Willow, what are you doing?" she asked, backing away from where Willow still knelt at his body.

She couldn't do anything but look on as Willow's eyes focussed on the sky above them, unaware of anyone else and seeing something no one else could, as the world around them darkened to a midnight black. The few fluffy, white clouds that had been bobbing in the sky that morning turned into an unreal silvery mass, taking on a magical and surreal glow, increasing in volume and covering the sky, seemingly falling down on them and surrounding the yard and the house, while violent, bright silver lightening strikes sparked in the atmosphere.

"By Osiris!" Willow yelled into the air, the body of her dead best friend weighing heavy on her lap and her heart, "I command you, bring him back!"

"Will!" Buffy called, terrified, looking around her, looking for a way to stop it, looking for a way out as the clouds above her darkened still, swelling and growing as more lightening crashed through the air. "Stop!" she screamed at her. "Please..."

"Hear me!" Willow yelled again at the clouds, ignoring everything else. "Keeper of darkness!"

The clouds swirled all around Willow to form a huge, wizened old face, demonic in visage, appearing through and made up of the matter to settle above and in front of her, lightening flashing around the face as if it were either protecting or willing to kill him.

"Guys!" Tara yelled as she ran out of the back door, the handset from the cordless phone stationed in the kitchen in her hand. "The ambulance is on it's—" She froze as she reached Buffy, apparently not seeing what was happening until she saw the look on Buffy's face that was somewhere between devastation and terror, and she dropped the forgotten phone to the ground. "No," Tara said, almost to herself. "She can't do this..."

"Do what?" Buffy asked, glancing at her briefly but not able to completely take her eyes off Willow. "What is she doing?"

"Osiris," Tara said quietly. "She's invoking Osiris..."

"I'm guessing he's not the patron saint of hugs and puppies?" Buffy said.

"We have to stop her," Tara told Buffy, panicking now and rushing forward to put a stop to things. "Willow!" she yelled to her girlfriend, only to get no response and feel a strong arm pulling her back.

"Wait," Buffy told her. "What does this Osiris do?"

"He...He brought you back..." Tara told her. "I mean, there was an urn and a ritual and some other stuff...but he's the one who brought you back..."

"Witch!" the demonic voiced boomed from the face at Willow, catching Buffy and Tara off-guard so much they started and instinctively took a few steps back, the sound filling the air with a resonance and making the hairs on the back of the two girls neck stand on end. "How dare you invoke Osiris in this task?!"

"Please," Willow sobbed to him. "Please, bring him back."

Tara watched desperately, torn between her fear of the god and the fear of what was happening to Willow. "We have to stop her," she told Buffy.

Buffy watched the face, watched Willow, and looked at the body lying cold on the ground. "Why?" she asked quietly, her voice small and breaking with the tears in her eyes, making her sound so different to the Slayer she was on a daily basis.

"Why do we have to stop her?" she asked Tara. "I mean, if he can do this," she said. "If he can bring Xander back, if there's any kind of a chance...can't we let her try?"

"You may not violate the laws of natural passing," Osiris' voice boomed at Willow, looking more than annoyed at his invocation.

"How?" Willow sobbed to him, holding Xander's body tightly, as if using it as evidence. "How is this natural?" she asked.

Tara watched the display, crying for herself, crying for Buffy and, mostly, crying for Willow. She was in so much pain, could feel it radiating off her in waves, but she knew that she needed to let Willow do this. It went against everything she believed in when she was trying to stop her using the Magick before, but this was the only way she had a chance of keeping her. She didn't know what the consequences would be - and she was sure there would be some - but if she stopped her now, if she interrupted this attempt to bring back someone so vital to them, neither Buffy nor Willow would ever forgive her, of that she was certain.

So, she stood back, putting an arm around Buffy, feeling the Slayer trembling, and smiled wanly at her to assent her decision, because she knew she didn't want to hear that this might not work, didn't want to hear that this could make things worse. "Okay..." she whispered.

"It is a human death, by human means," Osiris told Willow, lightening still crackling around them.

"But I—" Willow tried, speaking between sobs.

"You raised one killed by mystical forces," he told her, his voice resounding around them furiously. "This is not the same. He is taken by natural order. It is done."

"No," she cried in devastation. "There has to be a way."

"It is done!" Osiris told her resolutely, not willing to brook any sort of argument.

Willow's face crumpled as the sobs continued wracking her body. "NOOOO!" she screamed, her mouth wide open. The moment the sound left her mouth, a shimmering column of energy shot from her maw, heading directly for the demon. He screamed in torment as her power hit him, completely enveloping him, until he disappeared in a final flash of lightning, leaving only the sounds of a rapidly approaching ambulance in its wake.

* * *

From what had happened to Osiris to where Willow was now, things had pretty much been a blur to her, but now reality was setting in.

She had obliterated a god, and she didn't even care.

She hadn't moved when the paramedics had arrived. Tara had met them in the street when she heard their approach, but something told Willow that part of the reason she'd done it was because she hadn't wanted to be too close to her and think about what she had just done.

She vaguely remembered the two guys in blue uniforms running into the yard, reeling off a million and one questions about what had happened, but she wasn't listening. She had just held Xander's body close to her, smelling the washing detergent on his clothes and gel he insisted on using in his hair, even though he'd already told her he hated his hair at this length and that he was going to get it cut back to how it had been last summer.

There had been a discussion among the guys about what to do about her, she knew that much, the two of them talking over her like she wasn't there, even though she knew she probably wouldn't have answered them anyway. They had wanted to get near him to check his vitals, but when they touched him she'd told them to leave him alone. She told them to leave him in peace and that she'd take care of him, like she had when they were ten and he had the chicken pox. She had made chicken soup for the first time in her life, and burned the pan so much that the soup had been awful, but the laughing at her had made him forget about feeling sick for an hour at least, so the soup-splattered walls had been worth it.

That was when they'd physically removed her from him, lifted her into the air and she knew that if she'd had the energy she would've fought back. But the forgotten bullet wound in her shoulder was making its presence felt, the pain making her feel weaker than she could handle, and she supposed that was when she had just given in and passed out.

She came to to find herself inside of the ambulance, irritated by the intravenous needle they'd affixed to the back of her hand, but she hadn't opened her eyes. She could hear them, talking amongst themselves, and she could feel Tara's hand on her own, but she couldn't face any of them at the moment. In her head she knew that sounded awful, especially where Tara was concerned, but, oddly enough, the thought didn't have much of an impact on Willow.

There were more things on her mind right now, like the plan she was silently formulating. Maybe it was the drugs they were pushing through her veins to sedate her and relieve the pain, or maybe it was the time out that the loss of consciousness had given her, but suddenly everything was so clear to her. She knew what she needed to do now.

She had considered bolting from the ambulance, making an elaborate escape, but she still had some rationality – at least, enough of it to know that she was hurt pretty badly and that it was making her weak. At least being at the hospital would help the physical pain, if not the emotional.

Willow silently breathed a sigh of relief as the sirens finally stopped screeching and the vehicle came to a halt. She felt herself being shuffled around, but with the pounding headache the wailing sounds had given her, she didn't care where she was going as long as it was quiet enough to allow her to think a little more about her next action.

The gurney crashed dramatically through the double doors of Sunnydale Memorial Hospital as it was taken out of the ambulance by the two male paramedics, eliciting the attention of more and more people as it glided across the polished floors brought back long-forgotten memories for Willow. It reminded her of when George Clooney was on E.R., when she'd make Xander watch the show with her every week with popcorn and ice cream in her front room. He had always feigned lack of interest, but she had seen him on the edge of his seat on more than one occasion.

They would have debates on the realism of the show, even though their eleven-year-old arguments didn't have much wealth behind their knowledge. Funnily enough, it was Xander who had been on the pro side of the argument, despite the fact that she had been the bigger fan. A few years later, when Joyce had been brought into this same hospital after being bitten by Darla, it had been just how they used to see on T.V. When things had calmed down, and they knew Mrs Summers was okay, they were walking to the vending machine in the sterile white corridor and he had simply turned to her with a huge grin on his face and said 'I told you so', and did the dance he reserved for only the most special of occasions.

"...We have a Caucasian female," she heard from a distinctly male voice above her, "name Willow Rosenberg, 21, GSW to the shoulder..." Willow heard one of the paramedics say, obviously relaying whatever information was needed to the female doctor who was rushing alongside them, pushing a stethoscope to her chest, the feeling cold and surprising on her burning, ruptured skin. "...Pulse is 100 and weak..."

"What does that mean?" Tara asked, trying to keep up with their hurried pace, managing to finally find a place at the side of the gurney. "Is she going to—?"

"You need to stand back, okay?" the paramedic who had been talking earlier told her as one lot of blood-soaked gauze was taken from Willow's shoulder and a clean one replaced it. "If you want us to help her out, we need some space."

"Willow?" she heard someone calling, someone whose voice she didn't recognise. "Willow?"

The voice seemed so loud to Willow, like it was purposely bellowing in her ear out of spite because the owner of said voice knew she had a headache. She thought of closing her eyes, only to realise that she had never opened them, but the bright, fluorescent light was infiltrating her lids and confusing her, and she was partially pleased to realise she'd had the sense to try and block everyone else out before, even if it didn't seem to be working.

"Willow?" the voice said again. "If you can hear me, open your eyes," it told her. "Willow?"

"Alright!" Willow yelled furiously, opening her eyes wide to look at the person who had been calling her name. "Quit with the yelling, I'm not deaf!" she told the young nurse in scrubs who shrank away from the glare she was receiving.

The doctor looked at Tara, her eyes softening. "She was shot?" she asked her.

"Y-y-yes," Tara mumbled out, reaching one of her bloodstained hands into the gurney to put a hand on Willow's arm, an action which made Willow pull away from her, eliciting a look of confusion from the other girl.

"Accidental?" the doctor asked.

"No," Tara said as she followed them into one of the trauma rooms they had been heading for. "He was definitely looking to kill someone. I mean, he didn't mean to hit Willow, but..."

"There was another victim," the paramedic interrupted. "Male, same age, shot right through the heart. He didn't make it. Coroners been called," he told the doctor.

The doctor looked back to Tara. "Do you know who did this?"

"Warren," Tara told her. "This guy who..." she shook her head. "Just this guy."

"Warren..." Willow said venomously.

"Miss?" Tara heard someone say, but still started when she felt a hand on her arm. "Are you okay, miss?"

"What?" she said quickly, half turning to look at the nurse who wanted her attention.

"There's a lot of blood," the nurse told her, gesturing to Tara's own hands and clothes. "Do you know where it's coming from?"

"It's not mine," Tara told her. "It's Willow's."

"Okay," the woman said. "Well, how about we go and get you cleaned up?" she asked. "It's best if we let these people get on with helping your friend," the nurse told her, trying to guide her away from the hospital bed Willow was now being transferred to without so much as a wince.

"No..." Tara began to argue as the paramedics left the room, seemingly having completed their handover. "No, I want to stay with her."

"You can't," the nurse told her gently. "We need to work on her, and we can't do that with you here."

"Please," Tara said pleadingly, putting a bloody hand up to her face, before realising at the last second what she was doing and awkwardly lowering it again. "Let me stay with her."

"You'll just be outside," the nurse told her, pointing to the hall outside the door. "There's a glass partition just there, you'll be able to see everything."

Tara looked from Willow to the window and back at her girlfriend.

"I'll be fine," Willow told her from her bed, her tone more annoyed and impatient than would have been expected from someone in her position, a tone that Tara couldn't recall ever hearing before.

"Okay," Tara told the nurse, allowing the woman to lead her outside of the room. She looked back at Willow. "I'll just be outside, sweetie," she called.

* * *

She heard machines buzzing and beeping around her as electrodes and patches were attached to various parts of her body, but Willow didn't have time for all of this messing around. She felt weak, yes, but she didn't need all of these people poking her with needles and prodding at her and yelling orders at each other when she had other things to be dealing with. Like Warren, for example.

"...She's lost a lot of blood..." she heard one of the nurse's say.

"Call the O.R.," the doctor said to someone else. "She's going to need surgery to remove this bullet."

"What about the bleeding?" another doctor asked, having entered the room a little while before. "We can't control it."

Willow felt someone touching the white shirt she was wearing, and she instinctively grabbed the hands. "Okay, stop," she told them. "Just...stop..."

"Willow," the doctor said, looking at her while trying to replace the padding at her wound with fresh gauze. "We need to hook you up to a machine so that we can monitor your heart."

_My heart..._ Willow thought to herself. _Xander doesn't have one of those anymore._

She could hear someone vaguely saying that there was nothing to worry about, that it was just a precaution, but she had had enough, and she felt her patience snap quickly and almost audibly. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, gathering all of her power from within herself and opened her eyes again. She balled her hands into fists, her eyes slowly blackening over, as the lights in the room flickered on and off as if with a massive power surge, the machines beeping loudly, more than previously, the rate speeding up and dropping unhealthily in a broken rhythm.

"What's happening?" the doctor asked one of the nurses, looking around the room in the erratic lighting.

Willow lifted her head from the bed, looking the doctor right in the eye with a steely glare. "Leave," she commanded her, looking around the room at the other staff. "Now."

Inexplicably, the medical staff that had filled the room, rushing around with their instruments and machines, filed out of the room without a single word as Willow managed to lift herself up, steadying herself on her elbows.

The doctors and nurses reminded her of the Lemmings computer game Xander had taught her how to play when they were younger, and she felt herself smile a little. He had loved the way that they just went everywhere together, blind following the blind, and he said it was just like him and Willow, and she had laughed. Of course, then he would proceed to kill them all in the most gruesome fashion he could find when he got fed up of having to control them all, and he'd said that it was a good thing there was only the two of them to worry about.

_Not anymore..._ her thoughts reminded her and her smile fell again. _He's gone now._

She grabbed handfuls of the starched hospital bed sheets in her fists as she struggled to sit up, straining herself, pulling on the linen and putting more and more pressure on her wounded arm, the pain worsening with each movement that seemed to take hours, and she felt her mind haze over, like someone had put something over her head and she was trying to see through it.

"Willow?"

Willow rolled her eyes, knowing the voice belonged to Tara, and she soon felt her girlfriends once comforting hands on her arms but realised that now they held none of the warmth they'd had before. She managed to throw her legs over the side of the hospital bed, leaving them dangling while she regained her bearings, taking in deep breaths to will her erratic state to stabilise. When she glanced at Tara - a quick, fleeting look - she saw eyes full of concern and worry and confusion.

"What's going on?" Tara asked her. "They just...they just left..." she said, looking back at the door.

"I know," Willow told her, feeling the blood still ebbing slowly from her body, and she caught a glimpse of herself in the bright, reflective steel instruments that had been left unattended at her side by the medical staff. She barely recognised herself, noticing the distinct difference between her usual porcelain complexion and the paleness that had come over her now due to the blood loss, accentuated by the blackness that her eyes still held. She hadn't really looked at Tara before, not really, but when she did, Tara's eyes widened when she saw her colouring.

"What did you do?" Tara asked, horrified.

"I don't have...have time for this..." she mumbled out, the pain and weakness taking their toll on her now, but still she tore at the patches and electrodes that were attached to her body, needing to get them off of herself and hearing the machines they were hooked up to whining in alarm. "I need to..."

"We **need** to get those people back in here," Tara said, starting for the door.

"No," Willow told her, grabbing her arm and stopping her, the commanding tone in her voice so strong she surprised even herself. "I just need..." She closed her eyes briefly, her eyelids fluttering heavily. "Here," she said, her tone changing back to Willow voice. "Take my hand?" she asked, holding out her shaking palm in front of her.

Tara did as she was asked, blood on both of their hands as their fingers intertwined, watching Willow uncertainly. "I'm not sure about—"

"Shush," Willow told her, breathing slowly and finding it hard to take in enough air to satiate her lungs. "Just close your eyes, and concentrate really hard, okay?" she asked quietly. "I just need to borrow a little power."

"This isn't right," Tara told her gently, afraid to raise her voice, the feeling strange and unusual to her.

"Maybe not," Willow said sadly, her eyes imploring. "But I can't stay here, in this hospital. Too many bad things have happened here."

"I don't know if I can," Tara told her.

"You can," Willow told her. "Remember the very first night we did any magic together?" she asked. "We were stronger together."

Tara seemingly thought about it for a second, thinking back to that night, the night she was being stalked by the Gentlemen, and she slowly nodded her head, even though everything about that night was ingrained in her mind. The first time she had touched Willow and known she would never love anyone else. The memory was still there, as fresh as if it had only been yesterday, and she knew she'd give Willow anything she wanted right now. "O-o-okay..." she said quietly.

Willow allowed her a little smile, the most she could manage right now, and she waited for the other girl to close her eyes before she did the same. She could feel her own power inside of her, waning before but now surging through her body with the connection to Tara's, making her skin feel like it was humming.

She slowly opened her eyes at the same moment as Tara, and together they watched as the wound in Willow's shoulder seemed to open a little farther. The bullet appeared as if from nowhere, floating in the air as the torn muscle and flesh repaired itself, knitting back together and closing like the object had never even broken the skin, the veins around the hole steadily transforming from ruptured black and purple to become invisible under her skin.

"There," Willow said, visibly stronger, her breathing coming more quickly now, making up for the air she had been lacking before. "Good as new." She lifted her hand and plucked the still-floating bullet out of the air, bringing it closer to her face to look at it. "It's so small..." she said quietly, before closing her fist around it, opening her hand a second later to reveal the bullet had gone.

Tara was dumbstruck, still looking at the place in her shirt that still bore the hole and the red stain, hardly able to believe what had just happened. "What...what just happened?"

"Magic," Willow said simply as she hopped off the bed with ease, no sign of any of the physical pain she had felt before. She ripped the needle out of the back of her hand, a spurt of blood appearing in the air, before the wound closed quickly.

Tara noticed that her voice sounded different, even though she seemed much like the same Willow she knew. It was flat, empty, not at all like it had been a few minutes before when she had been imploring the other witch for help healing herself, but then Tara suspected that Willow had been using that as a ploy to get what she wanted.

This was what she had been afraid of. The magic was changing her, and Willow didn't seem to notice, or to care.

"How did you do that?" Tara asked as she looked at Willow uneasily. "I didn't think you knew spells like that."

"Yeah, well, I knew a lot of things before," she told her. Her voice sounded like she was annoyed now, switching from grateful to bored, like engaging in conversation was a chore, glaring at Tara with something unknown beneath her stare.

She turned, ready to leave, eyes narrowed. "Before I had to give it up, to make everyone else happy."

"It wasn't to make us happy," Tara explained to her. "It was – **is** – dangerous, Willow. You were using it too much, you knew that, depending on it for everything."

"And that was bad because...?" she asked tensely.

"It was bad for you," Tara said softly. "It got Dawn hurt, remember?"

"I remember," Willow said. "But now I need it."

"For what?" Tara asked.

Willow didn't answer her, just glared again, before she opened the door, ready to get on with what needed to be done.

"Why did you invoke Osiris?" Tara asked her, stopping her in her tracks.

"You know why," Willow said quietly, her head dipping as she closed her eyes against the image of Xander flooding back to her. "To bring him back."

"And you seriously thought he'd do it?" Tara asked. "Gods like Osiris are fickle, Willow, we know that from all the reading we did when you wanted to bring Buffy back."

"And I didn't hear you objecting to **that** at the time," Willow spat at her.

"I **was** concerned about that resurrection spell," Tara told her. "But I knew it meant a lot to you, and there were a lot of different factors in that. Besides, Buffy's a Slayer. The world is better with her in it."

"The world is better with **Xander **in it," Willow told her. "But you can't understand why I would want him back."

"I do," Tara said pleadingly. "But it was different with Buffy."

"He still brought her back," Willow said, speaking through clenched teeth.

"Yeah," Tara said, "and look how well that turned out. You know how Buffy's been since she came back. We ripped her out of some kind of heaven and, however much we try and make up for that, we can't. She has to live with that everyday. You'd want him to go through that?"

"I had to try," Willow said, tears springing into her eyes as her face began to fall. "I had to do something."

"I know what he meant to you," Tara said gently, slowly walking towards Willow to comfort her. "But he's gone, sweetie."

Willow's face hardened, the tears pushed away, the resolve that she had before coming back in full force, and she started out of the door again.

"What are you doing?" Tara asked, heading after her as she briskly walked along the long hospital corridor.

"I need to get something," Willow said, without looking back.

"What do you need?"

"Power."

"Where are you going?" Tara asked, quickly trying to catch up with her, but not knowing what she would do when she did.

"To get it."

* * *

Anya could feel the wrath of Willow's fury like a knife to the gut, just as she reached up to one of the shelves behind the counter of the Magic Box. She doubled over in pain at the sensation, her arm clutching her stomach as she felt the air knocked out of her lungs and the items she had been restocking fell to the floor, the jars and bottles shattering loudly in the otherwise quiet shop.

She had been a Vengeance Demon presently for only a few months, but never before, even when she had her eleven hundredth birthday under her belt, had she ever felt a thirst for revenge such as this. What made it worse was knowing whom it came from.

She took a deep breath, not quite able to stand straight yet with her arm still across her stomach, not even bothering to pick up the broken pieces of glass that lay on the floor. She shuffled the few steps from where she had been standing to the glass counter, and rested herself there, placing her hands on the cool surface.

Suddenly, the door flew open, as if blown by some freakish gust of wind in the normally placid Sunnydale weather, and Willow appeared in the doorway, but Anya wasn't surprised. She watched as the other girl marched inside, the demon in her withstanding the urge to flinch when the lamps and light fixtures around them began violently exploding from the witch's very presence. "Willow," she said calmly.

Willow didn't even bother looking at her, totally unfazed and determined. "Where do you keep the Black Arts books?"

"Something terrible has happened to Tara, I know," Anya told her. "But you don't have to do—"

"Tara's fine," Willow told her, looking around the shop for the items she required. "I need power."

Anya came out from behind the counter, concern in her face. "What do you mean?" she asked her. "I can feel your pain, Willow, but if it's not Tara then who..." she trailed off as it dawned on her. "Xander..." she said quietly, almost afraid of the response.

"Yeah," Willow said snidely. "Xander." She turned around, saw Anya's face full of worry and anguish, and watched with a self-satisfied grin as the former-demon-turned-demon again teleported away, leaving the witch knowing that she had been right all of those times when she had warned everyone that when things went wrong between Xander and his girlfriend - like she always knew they would - she would go back to her old life.

The thought of him was enough to wipe the smirk from her face, but she refused to give in to her feelings. "Alone at last," she said to herself. "Now, if I were a book on the Black Arts, where would I be...?" Her eyes wandered around the shop until they came to rest first on the ladder to the loft, then to the shelves full of books on the level it led up to.

Willow gestured with her head at the items on the high shelves, a nod that would have been barely noticed, had she been in company. She silently berated herself for not realising sooner that they would be up there, thinking of all the times when Giles had forbidden her to look at them, especially in this past year since Buffy's resurrection, when he was sure to have warned Anya to not let her near them when he left again.

Suddenly, responding to her action, all the books on the loft level began to fly off the shelves, landing in a heap on the large round table in the middle of the shop where so many nights had been spent researching or studying. Most of the nights spent with Xander trying to make her laugh when no one else was looking and usually at a time when she was trying to concentrate. He had succeeded, of course. He always had, even when they were study buddies back in high school. But then, she'd always been a sucker for his cartoon character impersonations.

The last book landed on the heaped pile, bringing her back to earth with a nasty bump, the tomes nearly overflowing from the table, and opened to a middle page. Willow walked over to the table and looked down at the pages, full of the smallest writing and text from different, ancient languages.

Willow lifted her hands in the air and placed her palms on the text-covered pages. Her hands sank into the leaves unnaturally, covering her arms up to the wrist like it was liquid as she put her chin to her chest in concentration, her limbs melding with the book as the words began to drift off the pages and over her skin. The text covered her arms, flowing through her as it scrolled and curled under the sleeves of the blood-stained white shirt, moving over her chest, shoulders and eventually her face, the figures, characters and words covering her whole body.

She lifted her head, eyes blacker than they had ever been before, as the words moved across her face and up to her hair, turning the tresses a pitch black.

She calmly removed her hands from the book, the books pages now a blank canvas, and she smirked to herself. "That's better," she said in a voice that hardly belonged to her.


	3. Chapter Three

A/N: This part is basically just a lot of the original stuff from the episodes, which I've tried to explain as best I can. I didn't want to get too into it because everyone probably remembers the original scenes anyway.

* * *

"...What do you mean, she just left?" Buffy all but yelled at Tara in the hospital room Willow had been occupying not so long ago. "She was shot," Buffy pointed out. "I'm not an expert, but shouldn't that mean a distinct lack of getting up and walking away with a gaping shoulder wound?"

"That's what I tried telling you on the phone," Tara said. "Her powers...they're more advanced than I ever thought," she said sadly. "The injury made her weak, but...but she used some of my power and she healed herself."

"So, she's okay?" Buffy asked.

"Well, the bullet's out," Tara told her, the panic within herself not subsiding at all since Willow's departure not so long ago. "I wouldn't exactly say she's okay."

"What do you mean?" Buffy asked suspiciously.

"You saw how she was back at the house," Tara told her. "What she did to Osiris wasn't within any normal Wicca powers. The stuff that happened before, when she got addicted...that's how she is now, only ten times worse, because she's been without the magic for so long."

"And you didn't go after her?"

"I...I couldn't..." Tara told her, lowering her eyes from Buffy, almost embarrassed. "She-she used a spell on me, a barrier."

"On you?" Buffy asked, surprised. After everything, the last thing she had expected was for Willow to risk her relationship with Tara again, especially with magic. That was when the serious alarm bells began to ring loud and clear in her head. That was when she realised that this was far worse than she could ever have imagined.

"Yeah," Tara told her. "I mean, I broke it, obviously, but I think she knew that I would. But, it's just...the forgetting spells, that was one thing...but using an actual physical power on me... This is bad, Buffy."

"I know," Buffy said sadly. "So, what do we do now?"

"I don't know," Tara told her.

"The first thing we do is find her, right?" Buffy asked, starting towards the door determinedly, looking back at the other girl. "Do we even know where to begin looking?"

"She said she needed more power," Tara told her as Buffy opened the door to the private room. "I think I know where she'll go."

"She's at the Magic Box," Anya said, standing in the open doorway, causing Buffy and Tara to start. "Where is he?" she asked, looking at them expectantly.

"Anya!" Buffy exclaimed loudly, a look of surprise on her face as her hand flew to her chest. "My God, where did you come from?"

"That doesn't matter," Anya said nervously and impatiently. "Where is he?"

Buffy held up her hands at Anya. "Wait a second," she said. "Did you just say you know where Willow is?"

"Yes, she's at the shop," Anya told her, irritated. "And judging by the look on her face, she's probably not looking to levitate any pencils."

"Well, that doesn't sound good," Buffy said quietly as she turned to look back at Tara. "We should get over there."

"Hold on," Anya said, grabbing Buffy's arm desperately. "Where is he?"

"He..." Buffy said, feeling confused for a split-second as she slowly caught Tara's eye and felt tears sting her eyelids. Then, she felt the grief well up in her body and her features. Looking at the girl in front of her, the girl she knew loved Xander with all of her heart, she realised that in all of their haste to find Willow, no one had thought about Anya, and that made the guilt she already felt at his death increase.

"Yes," Anya said impatiently. "Xander. Willow came to the Magic Box, and saying that she was pissed is an understatement. She said something had happened to him, which is why I'm here."

"Here at the hospital..." Tara said, almost to herself.

"Well, yes," Anya told her. "Xander's human, and if he's been hurt, the hospital is the best place for him to be, right?" she asked. "I mean, they have all those medical supplies, and funny instruments and machines that make noises that annoy the crap out of you." She looked at them both expectantly. "So, if you just tell me which room he's in, you can go and do whatever it is you were going to do, and I can stay with Xander and take him grapes and flowers and tell him he's going to be okay."

"Anya..." Tara said slowly.

"What?" she answered. "Isn't that what you're supposed to do when someone's sick?" she asked. "Or did they change the rules again? You know, like when they decided that leeches weren't good enough. Which, I bet the guy who put a stop to that is just burying his head in embarrassment, because I heard that some places in Europe—"

Buffy cleared her throat gently, closing her eyes briefly, trying to summon the words she needed but finding them stuck in her throat. She was relieved and terrified when the sound silenced Anya's ramble, and she desperately looked around the small hospital room for something, anything, to focus on to take away the pain. How do you tell someone something like this? "Anya," she said gently, placing a hand on the other woman's arm. "I, um..." her eyes flicked back to Tara, "Maybe you should sit down..." she told Anya.

"I don't want to sit down," Anya said loudly, suspicious of the Slayer and frantically searching her eyes for some kind of sign that the sense of foreboding she felt meant nothing. She snatched her arm out of Buffy's grasp as she took a step backwards, a sense of dread filling her as she felt her heart rate quicken, even in her demon state. "Just tell me where he is."

Tara stepped forward slowly, a comforting hand on the small of Buffy's back when she saw the tears come into the Slayer's eyes. "He's not here," she told Anya slowly.

"What do you mean, he's not here?" she asked. "I thought he was hurt?"

"He was," Buffy told her quietly.

"Then why isn't he here?" Anya asked.

"Anya..." Buffy said, her voice catching, threatening to break with the emotions she could feel running through her. "They couldn't bring him here," she told her. "There was nothing they could do for him..."

"You mean he didn't need the doctors?" she asked, confusion and denial ruling her mind.

"No," Buffy said, shaking her head sadly, unable to meet Anya's eyes. "I mean that..." she looked up at the other woman's confused face. "I'm so sorry, Anya..."

"You're sorry?" Anya asked. "Why are you...?" she trailed off when she saw a tear falling down Tara's cheek. "I've heard many people say that on many of the television shows I used to watch with Xander. When you say that there's nothing they could do, that's just another way of saying that he's...dead, isn't it?" she asked desperately.

Buffy nodded her head slowly, putting a hand to her face as she felt her resolve breaking once again.

"But he can't be gone," Anya said, her voice growing louder with hysteria. "This isn't how it's supposed to go. He's supposed to beg me to take him back for a long time, until I finally relent and we have lots of little people and we live happily ever after." She shook her head. "I don't understand..." she said as tears began to fall down her cheeks and she felt herself crumble. "He was supposed to warn me when this was gonna happen. He was supposed to tell me. He promised...I don't understand..."

Buffy wrapped her arms around Anya, allowing her sob into her shoulder, dampening the hooded sweater she was still wearing. "He didn't feel anything," she whispered to her. "There was no pain, I promise."

"Buffy..." Tara said softly, placing a hand on the Slayer's shoulder to catch her attention. When Buffy turned to look at her, Tara continued, "I'm sorry," she said apologetically, "But Willow...I can feel her getting stronger. She has power," she said. "A lot of it."

Buffy felt Anya disengage from their embrace, sniffling and wiping at her eyes, and looked from her to Tara, like she was trying to make a decision. She didn't know what she should do, when she had Anya who was grieving for a person they all loved in their different ways on one side of her, and Tara, who wanted to save Willow from herself and her powers.

"Where's Xander?" Anya asked, trying in vain to stop the tears falling from her eyes. "I mean, his body..." she said quietly.

"He's, um...he's back at the house," Buffy told her. "We had to wait for the coroner."

Anya's head snapped up to meet Buffy's with a glare. "What?" she asked. "You left him alone?"

"I...I had to..." Buffy mumbled out. "All this stuff with Willow..."

"So you left him alone?" Anya asked angrily. "Gee, that was nice of you."

"You don't understand..." Buffy began.

"No, I think I do," Anya said accusingly, eyes flaring with anger. "But when it was you... When it was your cold, dead body lying in the rubble, he wouldn't leave you. Not for a single second. Him and Willow, they didn't want to leave you alone. This is how you repay him? You can't even do the same for someone you claim to love..."

"Anya, please," Buffy begged. "Please understand—"

Anya took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Look, I'm not getting into this. Go and find Willow," she told them through clenched teeth. "I'll go and wait with...with Xander..." she finished shakily.

"Are you sure?" Tara asked.

"Anya," Buffy said quietly. "You know that we would be there with him, but—"

"Whatever," Anya said wearily with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Just go."

The Vengeance Demon waited for the Wicca and the Slayer to hurry down the hospital corridor, worriedly chattering between them, and disappear through the exit before she teleported herself to the body of her ex-fiancé.

* * *

Dawn pushed the open front door to the Summers house so that she could cross the threshold, and looked around nervously as she came into the foyer at the bottom of the stairs, the open door not usually a good sign when your sister's a vampire slayer.

"Buffy?" she called out uneasily, already knowing something was wrong by the feel of her skin goose-bumping under her shirt. When there was no reply, she put down the schoolbag that had been hanging on her shoulder on the floor of the hall, and started up the stairs slowly.

"Buffy?" she called again as she reached the top of the stairs and headed down the hall. No sign of anyone in Buffy's room, or in the bathroom, so eventually she came to the door to Willow's room.

"Hey. Hello?" she called loudly. "Uh," she said, gesturing to where she had just entered, "The door was..." She trailed off as she paused at the side of the bed, ready to make a quick exit if needed.

From where she stood, she could see blood staining the carpet. She felt her breathing grow ragged as she nervously took another step into the room proper, where all she could see was more of the sticky substance. Something caught her eye at the other side of the bed, one of Tara's favourite shoes, and she felt a queasiness fill her.

"Tara?" she asked quietly, moving towards it slowly. To her relief, the shoe was just a discarded item, something that was probably thrown off carelessly at some point, the probable causes of which making her blush. But still she followed her instinct to investigate the circumstances, something she wasn't exactly glad of inheriting from Buffy.

She stood at the side of the bed, kneeling down at the pool of blood on the ground that looked like it had been there a while, the edges around it hard where it had begun to dry, the metallic smell that she had become used to after so many demon slayings with her sister filling her nostrils. She couldn't see where it had come from, no sign of any demon carcass, but something told her that this blood was human, even though she wasn't sure why she knew that.

She looked from the blood and followed the rays of sun that were warming the air, and saw the spider-webbed hole made in the pane of glass in the window. She stood up slowly, walking over to it, touching the fragmented glass tentatively, and froze at what she saw.

Downstairs, in the yard, Anya knelt on the lawn, her head hung down and her hand covering her face. Dawn took a step closer to the window when she saw the familiar sight of Xander's sneakers at the woman's side and strained her eyes to see more.

She saw Xander's dead body.

* * *

Anya silently chastised herself as more tears fell from her eyes, the useless feeling she'd always had when she had been human, the feeling that always terrified her now back in full force for the first time since she had taken D'Hoffryn up on his offer. She didn't want to feel this way, didn't like feeling she was out of control, and she didn't want to cry for him either.

She kept telling herself that she was a Vengeance Demon, emphasis on the word 'demon', meaning that she wasn't supposed to feel like a human anymore. She wasn't supposed to feel like she'd had her heart ripped out, and she didn't want to weep like one of the stupid, mortal humans she had grown to loathe in her demonic days. But still, here she was, feeling like one of the creatures she pitied so much.

"Xander...?" she heard from beside her, and she spun around to look at the frightened teenage girl stood behind her, her hand over her mouth in complete horror.

Dawn stared down at the lifeless body on the ground, a bullet wound in the chest, right in the place his heart was. A few years ago, when she had been doing some homework for her biology class in the library of Sunnydale High while Buffy was training with Giles, Willow and Xander had been helping her with an experiment.

They had been learning about the human body in class, and that week they had been studying the respiratory system. They'd had to test heart rates, what made them speed up, slow down, that kind of thing. Xander had been especially helpful, running around the stacks like a crazy person until he had nearly passed out, then he let her put her hand on his chest, over his heart, so she could feel how hard it was beating after the exercise.

She had blushed at the time, because that was when her crush on him had begun, but Willow had blushed even more when he had grabbed the redhead's hand and made her feel it too. Suddenly that day was all she could think about.

"Dawn..." Anya said quietly, getting to her feet unsteadily, pain cramping her legs after so much time spent in the same, unchanged, knelt position.

"Xander...?" Dawn said again, devastated, as she looked at Anya. "What...what happened?" she asked her.

"There..." Anya began uncertainly, looking back at Xander, lying on the lawn like he was just basking in the sun at the beach, his pale face and cold skin the only telltale signs that something was wrong. "There was a gun...Warren tried to...he came to get Buffy..."

Dawn's eyes snapped up to Anya's. "Buffy?" she asked quickly. "Is she okay?" she asked. "Was she hurt? Is she...?" she didn't finish the sentence, she couldn't after what had happened the year before when she'd had to attend her sister's funeral.

"No, no," Anya said immediately, touching Dawn's arm in a comforting, reassuring gesture to both of them, something that had no effect on either of them. "Buffy's okay," she told her. "She's fine. I saw her a little while ago at the hospital. She had some stuff to take care of."

"But the blood..." Dawn said tearfully. "There was blood...in the bedroom, I saw it, I thought it was Tara..."

"It wasn't Tara," Anya told her. "It was Willow."

Dawn's eyes widened at her words. "Willow?" she asked. "She's—"

"She's okay, too," Anya said. "I mean, I think it was her who got hit and that must be her blood, but she's okay."

Dawn closed her eyes and tried to maintain a normal breathing pattern. "But he's not..." she said, breathing deeply and gesturing to Xander. "Is he?"

Anya put her arm around Dawn's shoulder, following the girl's eye-line to his form, and shook her head sadly. "No," she said quietly. "He's gone."

* * *

Warren Meers shifted uncomfortably in his seat, half disgusted when he felt the material of his pants stick to the chair with something he'd rather not think about, while his eyes darted around the room.

_It's not my fault,_ he thought to himself. _It was her own fault. She asked for it. She had to pay for humiliating me like that. She deserved it._

His mind re-ran the events from earlier that afternoon, when he had been in the bar. He had been so sure, so full of himself when he'd walked into the place. Why was that a bad thing? That was all he'd ever wanted, to prove to the rest of the world that he was worth something. Unfortunately, in Warren's warped mind, that action was eliminating the local slayer.

Even now, when he knew that he hadn't actually killed her, he still felt some self-satisfaction that he'd go down in the history books as the guy who shot her, who'd injured her enough to have the newscaster's announcing it on the TV.

There had been very few times in Warren's life when he had felt the elation he had experienced when he had ran from the Summers back yard with a firearm in his hand. The last time he had truly felt anything close to it had been...

...Katrina.

The name and the images of her resounded in his head so much he had to physically shake it off. And it hadn't been when she'd been under the influence of the spell he and the others had cast, either. It was before, when she'd been his willingly. She'd made him feel that everything was okay, that it always would be when they were together. But the bitch had taken it away from him.

She'd paid for that with a cold, hard crack of her skull when she'd tried to get away from him.

The emptiness he felt after her death was like a cold void in his chest. But not because he was devastated at the tragic event. It was the opposite. He felt nothing.

Buffy had gotten in the way again, then, with her little band of followers, making sure that he knew she had him all figured out.

At first, when he had first returned to Sunnydale after the April incident and joined up with Jonathon and Andrew, it hadn't been anything personal against Buffy. Even late at night, when he used to lie awake in his bed, thinking of the things he'd do to her when she realised that he was the real power now, he didn't really fantasise about her. It was the power he'd have over her, having her at his mercy, and that had turned him on more than anything else.

But then they'd seen her out patrolling, watched her thwart their every single attempt to take over their pathetic little town, and he'd realised that she was the one thing that was standing between him and his ultimate goal. Every time he saw her after that, he'd see black and feel the bile rise in his throat that refused to go away.

Back in the bar, there hadn't been any specific details about the so-called 'incident' at Rovello Drive. Even if there had been, Warren wouldn't have heard them. His mind had been buzzing with the news that the victim had survived, and he'd turned himself off. He'd gotten up, walked away with the vampires and demons laughing at him, and he'd tried to figure out what to do next.

He'd thought briefly of breaking Jonathon and Andrew out of jail, but dismissed it as a bad idea that would take too much time and energy. They'd both been good to him, followed him like all good puppies should, and he knew that. Again, it was about the power he had over them, and he figured that the two of them languishing in a jail cell was better than the three of them, and he didn't feel guilty at being the one that got away. They were good guys, before he had corrupted their minds, but in his eyes he had been making them better, stronger men, just like him. He was taking them away from heir dull, boring lives, and from being the dweebs they had been in high school. He was changing them into people that the world would take notice of. It wasn't his fault that they couldn't take it, couldn't handle the pressure.

Another thing the slayer was to blame for, in one way or another.

The look on Buffy's face when he marched into her garden with the gun was enough to calm him for just a second. She'd been stunned, terrified, and that made something inside of him stir. She'd had no idea what he had in mind for her, what he could do to her with just a tiny amount of pressure on the right bit of heated metal.

This wasn't the end, he knew that much. He'd try again. Coming to Rack's was just an insurance policy against his health. Plans were already formulating in his head. He didn't know exactly how yet, but he'd get her back for everything she'd done to him.

He'd make her sorry they had ever met.

He glanced around at the waiting room, which was hardly that of a doctor's surgery. The magazines that lay on the dusty, stained coffee table were out of date by at least a few years, and were indeterminably soiled by something or another. The décor was cheap, tacky, and unclean. The off-white paint that had obviously been on the walls for what looked like a decade or two was chipped and peeling, the furniture twice as old and in need of some definite repair. The standards of the place was made all the worse by the dimness of the low bulbs in the small lighting fixtures around the room, and the people waiting around for the services of the man through one of the doors were definitely of an unsavoury reputation.

Rack came out of his room as his last client scurried out of the door, away from the place as quickly as possible, and the deeply scarred man looked around the room questionably. "All right," he drawled loudly, "Who's next?"

Warren, who had been fidgeting with nerves and excitement, jumped up impatiently on hearing the warlock's question. "I am," he yelled a little too enthusiastically.

One of the other guys who had been waiting, a guy who looked like he had seen better days before his magick addiction had taken hold, looked pissed off as the new guy walked quickly over to Rack, cutting in line in front of him. "Hey!" he complained loudly.

Rack looked Warren up and down critically, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "You're new," he told him.

"Yeah," Warren said impatiently, looking around the room suspiciously and holding up a large wad of cash he had pulled from his jacket. "And I come bearing dead presidents," he told Rack, "So you think we can just skip the small talk?"

Rack smiled a little, his eyes drawn to the cash, and gestured toward the room behind him. Once Warren had entered and Rack had followed, the latter closed the door behind them, sanctioning them in the private room, the noise of the door closing audibly making an already nervous Warren jump.

"How'd you find me?" Rack asked, a trace of a smirk on his smarmy, untrustworthy face.

"I talked to a guy," Warren told him. "He's one of your regulars. Offered to show me the way for twenty bucks."

Rack grinned smugly. "Should have haggled," he told him. "Most of my customers'll bring you here for five."

"Great," Warren told him impatiently, his eyes scanning the murals on the walls and the old, dirty once-plush pillows lay out on the floor of the room. "Great, I'll file that away. Look, I'm in a bit of a situation here," he said quickly. "I tried to do us all a favour and eliminate the Slayer, but it...I..." he trailed off, unnerved by the way the other man was looking at him, staring as if waiting for something to happen, like it was part of a joke he wasn't aware of. "I guess it didn't take."

"Killing a Slayer," Rack said, taking a few steps closer to Warren, making the kid avoid eye contact with him. "That's big business for a kid."

"I'm not a kid," Warren snapped at him.

"Okay," Rack said, closer than before, inches away from the other guy, making him more nervous by the minute.

"I had my own guys," Warren said defensively, jutting his chest out proudly with a self-satisfied smirk. "The Trio, yeah, you've heard of us."

"Right," Rack said with a shrug. "What were you, a band or something?"

"I thought word travelled in the underworld," Warren pointed out, almost to himself, frustrated and exasperated. "You know, we were evil. Robots were my thing." When Rack looked at him with another shrug and a blank expression, he continued, "You didn't hear about the freeze ray?"

Rack shook his head. "Sorry," he told him. "So why aren't your guys helping you?"

"Look, I thought this was a cash for service gig, not an interview process, all right?" Warren snapped at him, waving the money in his face. "I need protection. I've got the Slayer after me."

Rack moved away solemnly. "Slayer is the least of your problems," he said, drifting away from Warren.

"You're right," Warren said dryly. "Let's talk about my skin troubles. You know, I'd say on the scale of problems, that she ranks!"

"If I were you, I'd be worried about the witch."

"Witch?" Warren asked, surprised at the statement. "W-which witch?" he stammered out.

"Willow," Rack clarified. "Slayer's pal?" he asked, walking closer to the boy again in an attempt to jog his memory. "She's the new power, man, anybody with intuition can feel it. She's going to blow this town apart," he said, his face inches from Warren's, intimidating the other guy. "Starting...with you..."

"Me?" Warren asked, a little more scared now, still surprised. "What did I...what did I do to her?" he asked. "O-okay, okay, I, I shot her friend..."

"You didn't even hit the Slayer," Rack said with a scoffing laugh, even though he wasn't listening anymore as he closed his eyes, his face contorting as if he were in pain, turning away from Warren. "I feel death..." he said weakly.

"But the Slayer's alive," Warren pointed out. "I mean, it was on the news, the girl who got shot is okay."

"Slayer might be," Rack told him, "but somebody's stone cold, and **that**..." he said slowly, deliberately unnerving him, "...is why the witch wants your head. She can sense your essence right now, man. It's just a matter of time before she finds you."

Warrens face fell in a panic, his hands shaking and clammy as he lunged forward to where Rack was standing and pushed the whole wad of bills into the man's hand. "All right!" Warren yelled at him. "Take it," he told him. "All right, there's that, and I can get more. Just give me something," he begged.

Rack looked down at the money in his hand casually. "Hide or fight?" he asked.

"Both," Warren told him. "All of it. I-I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, but it's not enough. I need-I need a cover, and I need lots of fire power."

"I can't guarantee anything," Rack told him casually, shrugging with his warning. "Not this time." He leaned in towards Warren solemnly. "The girl is running on pure fury. I've never felt anything like it," he whispered, a smug grin slowly spreading over his lips.

Warren rolled his eyes impatiently. "Thank you for the tip, Nostradamus," he said sarcastically. "Just load me up, okay?"

* * *

"Careful!" Tara yelled as the car screeched to a halt at the kerbside, the rubber tyres bouncing off the sidewalk violently, the impact causing both her and Buffy to jolt forward and back, the seatbelts they were wearing causing minor whiplash.

"What?" Buffy asked, turning off the engine and looking at her innocently.

"I thought you said you could drive?" Tara questioned, rubbing at the sore point in her neck as she unfastened herself from the car.

"I said I had a license," Buffy pointed out to her as they got out of the car. "I never said I could drive."

"Sorry," Tara muttered, "I kinda thought the two went hand in hand."

"Not with the examiner who tested me," she said. "It was his last day, he was kinda old, and I cried when he said he was gonna fail me. I gave him this whole sob story about me breaking up with my boyfriend and blah, blah, bliddy, blah."

Tara shook her head, closing the passenger door of the car, looking up at the sign for the Magic Box. "You think she's still here?" she asked, looking at Buffy.

The sound of the bell above the entrance to the shop pinged loudly, making Buffy cringe with the memories of the day that would never end, and the door opened, revealing a very different-looking Willow, all in black, hair included. "I'm gonna go with yes..." Buffy said uneasily.

At first, Willow didn't see them. All she saw was the vehicle that belonged to Xander.

_**Did** belong to Xander,_ she corrected herself.

He had been so proud when he had bought that car, he had insisted on taking everyone for a drive. It turned out that he was too impatient to wait for Anya to finish work, for Buffy to finish off the vampire nest she'd found, and for Dawn and Tara to finish school. He had turned up at her dorm room, jingling keys in hand, promising candy and other goodies if she accompanied him. She had tried to tell him that she needed to study for finals, but he said it wasn't any fun on his own, and she'd fallen for the puppy dog-eyed stare like she always had. That was how it had come to be the two of them.

They had driven to the outskirts of a nearby town in the shiny purple car, the journey taking longer than they had intended because they had been so busy talking about things they hadn't thought about in years that they took a few wrong turns and ended up on the wrong freeway. When they had gotten back, Tara and Anya had admonished the pair of them like they were naughty children for making them worry. But at the time, they hadn't cared. They'd had fun together for the first time in months, and nothing was going to spoil that. They had said then that they were going to make it a regular thing, the two of them spending time together, but it never happened with work and school and slaying.

_And now, it'll never happen again..._ she thought.

She shook the memories out of her head, chastising herself for thinking about it now. She'd have plenty of time for feeling sorry for herself later. Now, there was something else on her mind.

She finally looked at them, seeing them for the first time, the tiniest smile of familiarity on her face, as though nothing had changed. "Buffy, Tara, hey," she said politely.

"What's going on?" Buffy asked, not quite sure who she was asking the question of, looking from the girl dressed in black to a speechless Tara for an answer and finding nothing.

"I'll explain," Willow told them, "But we've got to go."

"W-why?" Tara asked.

"It's time to find Warren," Willow told them, not looking at them pushing away the memories that came to mind as she opened the car door and climbed inside.

* * *

"Faster," Willow told Tara, who was driving Xander's car along the deserted highway in the middle of the Californian desert just outside of Sunnydale. The land was dry and desolate on either side of the tarmac road, the sun beating down on the already parched surroundings.

Tara looked at her girlfriend who was sat in the backseat of the car through the rear-view mirror, still finding the black hair shocking to look at, even though she felt some sense of relief that her eyes had returned to their natural green. "I'm going as fast as I—"

"Faster!" Willow said again, insisting and unwilling to brook any argument as the gas pedal slammed down, apparently of it's own accord, making the car speed up.

"Will, would you cut that out?" Buffy asked, looking from the road to her friend in the back seat. "If we'd wanted crazy driving lady, it'd be me in front of the steering wheel."

"We need to stop," Tara said nervously. "I don't like this."

"We're close," Willow said in a quiet voice. "I can feel him."

"And we'll catch him, and he'll go to jail," Buffy said. "Look, I know you're finding the whole getting shot thing very motivating," she pointed out. "But you're using magic."

"If I wasn't, I'd have bled to death," she told them accusingly.

"Maybe," Buffy said. "But this isn't right," she told her. "Okay, this isn't how I want it."

Willow gave a smirk. "Sometimes you don't have a choice."

"Will," Buffy said desperately, "You **do** have a choice. This isn't good for you."

Tara looked back at her, shocked at the change in someone she thought she knew better than anyone. "You made the decision to stop for a reason," she said to her girlfriend gently. "You promised us."

"And can I just ask," Buffy said, "What's with the makeover of the damned?"

"Magic," Willow said simply.

"But the hair—"

But Willow wasn't really listening to them. She sat up suddenly, pulling herself forward with the back rests of the seats in front of her. "Turn right!" she told them forcefully. "Go!"

Tara searched the road ahead of her, seeing nothing but open land, and looked back confused. "Go - where?" she asked.

"Over there!" Willow gestured furiously, "Now!"

Tara looked confused. "Willow?" she asked.

"Turn," Willow told her commandingly in a voice that Tara hardly recognised, as the steering wheel turned itself under her hands.

Tara froze as the car screeched in the road, the tyres hitting the dirt of the desert, zooming between the bushes and brush of the land. She held up her hands in defeat. "Fine," she told her. "Fine! You wanna drive? Go right ahead!"

The car continued to bounce along the uneven surface of the desert, finally coming to a halting stop at the side of another highway.

Willow jumped out of the car and began to stride across the highway as Buffy and Tara got out of the car to follow, albeit more confused at the witch's actions.

"Willow, wait!" Buffy called out to her friend.

Willow looked back at them with fire in her eyes. "Stay back," she told them in the same commanding tone she had used at the hospital, gesturing to them with one hand. Purple-black bolts of energy flew from her fingertips over her companions, immobilising them and stopping them from coming near her.

She kept walking, more determined than ever and not looking back at the people who loved her, as a bus appeared over a rise on the horizon, approaching the girl who had stopped waking and was now standing in the middle of the road, glaring at the oncoming vehicle.

As she had in the car, Willow controlled the steering wheel of the bus, causing the driver inside to hurriedly try and correct the directions but not succeeding as the bus sped towards the person standing calmly in the path of the vehicle.

The driver tried in vain to press the brake pedal of the bus, finding the pressure he was applying not even affecting the speed, his face filled with panic as he continued to wrestle with the wheel.

The bus suddenly began to slow down, throwing the passengers, including Warren, around in their seats as the sound of screeching tyres reverberated loudly and the bus slammed to a stop, inches before Willow.

Unfazed by the proximity of the bus, Willow walked around to the side of the transport, waiting at the doors as they opened with a loud shushing noise, thanks to her powers. "Get out," she commanded.

The passengers craned their necks, hurrying to the windows, trying to get a glimpse of what was happening outside of the vehicle, as Warren got up, walked down the aisle and down the steps out of the bus. He barely had time to react as Willow grabbed him by the neck and lifted him from the ground, her eyes back to black.

"Please," Warren begged her, his voice raised in terror. "I'll-I'll do anything."

Willows hands closed around his neck, squeezing with vengeance as a horrible cracking sound came from his body, something Willow seemingly didn't hear until suddenly an eye popped out of the head, revealing metal and wiring and sparks in the empty socket.

Willow released her grip on the body and allowed it to fall to the floor, the thing that looked like Warren lying motionless on the floor as Buffy and Tara ran over, now free of their paralysis.

Willow looked at them, a disappointed, surprised look on her face. "It's a robot," she said needlessly. "I-I could feel his essence," she said, confused. Then, as she saw Buffy's look of sympathy, she felt her anger rise again. "He tricked me," she said through clenched teeth, before she began to walk away. "We'll find him another way," she said resolutely.

"And then what?" Tara asked, turning to follow her.

"And then we'll kill him," Willow told them, no hint of emotion or regret in her voice as she continued walking.

Buffy quickly caught up with Willow, stopping her and grabbing her arm, causing her to stop and turn around. "Okay," Buffy told her firmly, "you need to calm down."

Willow's eyes fixed on hers. "Calm down?" she asked.

"Look, you're angry," Tara said sympathetically, hoping that somehow she could reach her. "I am too. There's no excuse for what Warren did, but that—"

"He shot Xander," Willow told her bluntly.

For a second, Buffy and Tara were both speechless.

"I know," Buffy said eventually, quietly. "I was there."

"He's dead," she said matter-of-factly. "Now, Warren's dead too."

"Willow," Buffy said sadly. "Please, just stop," she asked.

Willow stared at her coldly, the blackness of her eyes scaring the girls. "I'm busy," she told them, as she started toward the car again.

Buffy grabbed Willow's arm again, feeling the witch tense under her grip. "We love you," she told her.

"And Xander," Tara added sadly. "But we don't kill humans. It's not the way."

"How can you say that?" Willow spat at them both, looking between them for a reason why she should stop. "Xander is dead."

"I know..." Buffy said sadly. "I know," she repeated, tears filling her eyes and her voice. "And I...can't understand...anything. Not what happened...a-and not what you must be going through."

"Willow, if you do this, you let Warren destroy you too," Tara told her seriously. "You said it yourself, sweetie," she said. "The magic's too strong, there's no coming back from it."

She looked them dead in the eye. "I'm not coming back," she told them, turning away from them and trying to get away.

Buffy pulled her back, yet again. "Will, please," she said desperately. "We need you. Please...we'll get through this together."

"We won't!" Willow snapped at her, pulling her arm away from her violently. "Not your way."

"Please, just—" she began emotionally.

"No!" Willow yelled at both of them. "No more talking. It's done!" She turned away again, this time gesturing behind her as she refused to be held back any more, and another bolt of energy sprang from her, this one stronger than the last as the Magick flew at Buffy and Tara, knocking them from their feet at the side of the road as Willow continued walking.

As quickly as they could manage, Buffy and Tara got to their feet, brushing the dust and debris from themselves in the hope of stopping Willow from what she was so determined to do.

All they saw was the empty car and an empty highway in front of them.

Willow was gone.

* * *

The sun was setting in Sunnydale, and all around the town residents were illuminating their residences brightly, subconsciously warding away the creatures of the night that preyed on their town.

Buffy and Tara wearily walked up the path towards the front porch of the house that everyone seemed to occupy. They approached the door cautiously, noting the fact it still stood wide open, and they exchanged a glance as they entered.

"Willow?" Buffy called out in the darkened house. "Dawn?"

Buffy moved off to the left, into the living room proper, while Tara took the dining room, the two of them eventually meeting back in the foyer where they had parted when they both came upon nothing.

"You think the coroner came already?" Tara asked.

"I don't know," Buffy said uncertainly.

They both looked toward the kitchen, slowly walking through the dining room together silently, opening the back door.

"Dawn?" Buffy called into the open air as they both paused at the open door. Seeing the two figures huddled on the grass in the moonlight, Buffy pressed forward slowly, an expression of dread on her face as the body still lay there, speckled with moonlight and shadows, blood still covering his chest. "Oh, god..." she whispered to herself in horror.

It shouldn't have been a surprise, in her line of work dead bodies were an everyday occurrence, and she had been there when he had fallen. But now...now he looked different. Before she had left him, he just looked like he had been sleeping, but now he looked cold, pale...

He looked...dead.

Dark red blood had pooled underneath him on the bright green grass, contrasting harshly in a way that hurt her eyes and made her queasy, and she had to close her eyes against the sight for fear of never being able to rid herself of the image.

She would never be able to put into actual words exactly what her friends meant to her, because words would never seem enough. They were her family, it was that simple. They were her safety net, her comfort, and when she was out with them at the Bronze, or when they were all watching a movie in her darkened sitting room, she felt like nothing could ever come between them, and she felt blessed to have them in her life, but there were times – like right now – when she wished that she'd never met them, never let them into her life.

She looked back at the house for one brief moment, and for a few seconds, she hated the building that usually made her feel safe. It had been her haven for so long, the place she had shared with her mother and her sister, the place she had lived a normal life away from the supernatural complications. Suddenly, the place didn't hold so many happy memories. All she saw was the bloodshed and the pain and the emptiness.

This was where her mother had been taken from her.

This was where Spike had tried to rape her.

This was where Xander had been killed.

It would never feel safe or happy or loving ever again.

"We didn't..." Dawn said softly, tears in her quiet voice and shaking Buffy from her thoughts. "...We didn't want to leave him alone..."

Buffy turned and found Dawn huddled in a little ball with Anya, both of them crying silently, looking like they had been there a while. She knelt down beside them gently, looking back at his body. "Dawn?" she said, "Sweetheart?" she told her. "Come on," she urged, trying to get her to her feet. "Honey, we need to get inside, okay?" she said, stroking Dawn's hair gently and holding Anya's free hand, the coldness of it surprising her. "Dawn, sweetheart," she said gently. "Be strong for me, okay?"

Tara, who had been standing in the open doorway, came out into the garden, standing beside them and looking at Xander in dismay and sadness.

"Guys," Buffy said again to her sister and her friend. "We need to go inside."

"I don't understand," Dawn told her sister, sobbing, looking up at her with a look that broke Buffy's heart, causing Anya to hold her tightly.

Buffy pulled both of them towards her and hugged them as they continued crying brokenheartedly. "I don't understand either," she whispered honestly.


	4. Chapter Four

A/N: A few people have mentioned that the last part or so has included a lot of transcribed stuff, and this part is no different. The thing is, when I take them out or just skim over them or mention them briefly, it just doesn't seem to read right. I'm leaving them in – and this is especially true for this part – because they are very integral to the story. It's needed to understand the rest, if that makes any sense.

* * *

The door to Xander's apartment wasn't a problem to open. Even if she didn't know that he kept the spare key under the mat outside of the door – and she had told him hundreds of times just how clichéd that was – she could have just opened it with her wave of her hand. She liked the key way better. It made her feel like she wasn't intruding or that she wasn't supposed to be here, wasn't sneaking around in his home while he wasn't there.

She never had felt that way here, of course. She'd come here a lot when he wasn't around, to study or just to be alone for a little while, and he'd always encouraged it, liked it even when she was there when he got home. He said that his home was her home, and vice versa, just like it had always been when they were kids and they'd just walked into each others houses unannounced, no matter how much Anya objected to it now.

Although, when Willow was fourteen, she had opened the back door one time and saw Mr Harris bending over the open refrigerator in the kitchen, searching for a beer, wearing only a vest and grubby white boxer shorts, scratching himself, and she had quickly changed her course of action after that.

That was an image she didn't need reminding of, and had told herself that in the future she would always knock loudly. But then, the flaw in that plan was no one ever answered the door in the Harris house and she'd still have to let herself in, so she made sure she always yelled her entrance so that she didn't get any more nasty shocks. On the plus side, though, there was that one time when she'd walked into Xander's bedroom and caught him shirtless, but the less said about that the better...

The curtains in the apartment were pulled closed and she guessed that they had been that way for at least a week judging by the dust particles and spider webs resting on them, but even in the darkness she could see that the place wasn't what you'd describe as clean. Or tidy. There were empty pizza boxes, takeaway cartons, beer cans and bottles strewn around the darkened place, lining the floor and the furniture, and somewhere inside of her she felt a pang of something. She could feel his warmth here, his familiarity, his scent, but she refused to allow herself to be ruled by memories, feelings from days past that had no bearing on what she was doing here now.

It was useless to think of them, but something inside of her brain wasn't listening, and instead threw images at her of him taking a sick day, and them sitting on the sofa for hours at a time, having movie marathons while Anya was earning her beloved money and annoying Giles. They would sit there on the sofa, eating popcorn and ice cream and everything else that was bad for them but made ideal film food. Or they'd play board games that were years old, and Xander would blatantly cheat but still lose.

Just the feeling of being next to him, having his arm around her shoulders, had always comforted and reassured her in ways no one else had ever been able, not even Tara, and even at times when she didn't think she needed those things. But the times when she needed it the most, like after Buffy's death, when she didn't think she'd ever be okay again, he had held her and it felt a little better just because he was there and he understood.

She made herself a path in the rubbish on the floor and followed the debris, walking through the living room and dining area to the bathroom before she realised how dumb it was to think that he'd actually put his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper there. He was a man, newly-single after a few years of having someone cleaning up after him and telling him to put his dirty socks in the laundry, so, logically, the best place to find what she was looking floor was on the floor of his bedroom.

The blinds were closed in here, too, but the blades allowed in some of the moonlight from outside, and she briefly paused there, not really looking at anything, just standing and waiting, although she didn't know what for.

She thought that maybe some unconscious part of her was waiting for him to appear in the doorway, dirty and sweaty from work, and making crude jokes about how he'd always hoped to find her waiting for him in his bedroom like he had done one time before when she had been in there looking for a movie he'd borrowed.

She'd found that a perfect time to remind him that this wasn't the first time. She had brought up the awry love spell Amy had cast back in high school that had caused her to go extra extra goo-goo for him, when she had dressed in only one of his shirts and waited in his room to seduce him. She had reminded him that he had been nothing but chivalrous in not taking advantage of her while she was under the influence. Or, at least, he had been so scared out of his wits that he'd made run for it like he was fleeing a particularly heinous laughing clown at his sixth birthday party.

Something had happened then. Nothing that could have been detected by anyone else, but he had told her, somewhat sadly, that he wished he'd taken the chance they'd been given when he had it, and he wasn't just talking about the spell.

She didn't reply to that comment for at least a few minutes after, because she wasn't quite sure if she had heard him right. There was a silence that had fallen between them, but it wasn't uncomfortable as they had held each other's stares and she wondered if she was supposed to read between the lines of the statement, even though she already knew what he had meant by the look in his eyes.

Ignoring that feeling of loss and emptiness that threatened to fill her if she gave in to it, she slowly moved around the room, looking for what she needed. She found it on the bed among the ruffled comforter and blankets and yet more empty pizza boxes and beer cans: a shirt that had obviously been worn.

It was a light blue shirt that she had bought for him a few months ago. It wasn't for any special occasion, but just because she'd seen it in a store window and thought it would suit him. He had smiled when she gave him it wrapped in some old Snoopy Christmas paper she'd found left over from the previous year, and he said that she didn't have to buy him gifts as he tore into it. He had redeemed his initial disappointment that the gift wasn't any kind of candy with a look that showed her he was really touched by the sentiment before killing the tender moment by asking if this was her way of telling him he was a crappy dresser.

She reached out to touch the piece of clothing that seemed to have fared better than everything else in here. The shirt had been folded, albeit shabbily, and placed at the end of the bed. Her hand seemed to tremble as she touched it, until her eyes saw what her limb was doing and intentionally grabbed the shirt unfeelingly, her face set with will and determination as she left the room quickly.

She went back to the living room, kneeling beside the sofa and clearing away as much of the mess around her as she could, and laid the shirt out in front of her. What she had been looking for, the few drops of blood on the collar of the garment, was barely visible in the dark, but she knew it was there.

He had been complaining about it a few days ago, how he'd nicked his skin whilst shaving and the blood had stained the shirt. At the time, she'd just hugged him and said she'd just buy him another one, a better one. But that hadn't appeased him because he'd wanted to wear **that** one, pouting like he did when she'd demanded her Barbie back when they were five.

She turned the shirt over so that it was bloody-side down on the carpet, and fixed on it with her still-black eyes. "Blood of the slain, hear me," she said quietly. "Guide me to Xander's killer."

The droplets of blood that had dried on the collar of the shirt rose to the surface, now clearly visible as it pooled disturbingly over the material, reminding her of what had happened to her shirt when her own blood had been spilt earlier in the day. The blood droplets separated and parted from itself, forming a disturbing red map of Sunnydale on the shirt, a glowing dot indicating what she had been looking for like a tiny fire in one little spot, the little orb moving slowly with her prey.

* * *

Anya stood before the big round table in the middle of the Magic Box, surveying the now-blank pages of the books heaped on the table as she lifted one from the pile and watched the empty pages flick by.

"I wasn't sure whether or not you'd be here," Tara told her, walking slowly down the few stairs in the entrance of the shop, the other girl seemingly not having heard the bell above the door ring.

Anya rolled her eyes. "You people again," she muttered under her breath. "When are you going to get the message?" she wondered, sitting down on the partly pulled out bench. "I came here to get **away** from you."

"We weren't sure what happened to you," Tara said. "One minute you were there, the next minute you'd gone. We were worried."

"I couldn't stay there," she said quietly, not looking back at her friend. "I couldn't watch them...take him away..." She quickly shook off the tears that were once again threatening her. "Besides," she said, referring back to the original statement. "It's not like I have an elsewhere to be. I figured I might as well come here and see what Willow was so interested in with this stuff."

Tara walked forward, standing at Anya's side. "And?" she asked.

"It looks like she went straight to the Dark Arts books," she told her. "Sucked them dry."

Tara closed her eyes, her fears being realised as she nodded, not surprised. "Willow's out for blood, big time," she told Anya. "We need to find her before she finds Warren. Is it okay if I use some things for a locator spell?" When Anya turned to look at her, she put her hands in her pockets. "I'll pay for the supplies, I promise," she told her quickly.

"You don't need a spell," Anya told her, albeit slightly reluctantly. "I can feel her."

Tara looked confused. "You can...?"

"Feel her," Anya repeated. "Her thirst for vengeance, it's overwhelming."

Tara was slightly taken aback. "Is that, like, left over from your Vengeance Demon days?" she asked inquisitively. "You just sense her?"

"No," Anya told her, looking away from her for a second. "Not left over."

When Anya made eye contact again, Tara saw the look there, meaningful and speaking volumes. "Oh," she said simply, before her eyes widened as she realised the enormity of it. "Ohhh..."

"Yeah," she said simply, the ringing of the bell above the door signalling someone else coming in, and Anya looked over, seeing Buffy.

"When?" Tara asked her.

"When do you think?" Anya asked sourly.

"Is everyone okay?" Buffy asked worriedly, rushing over to them impatiently. "Did Willow—?"

"Got her power boost and took off," Anya interrupted her, showing her one of the blank books.

"Anya's..." Tara began, looking at Anya and then at Buffy, not quite sure how to phrase herself. "Anya was saying she knows where Willow is."

"A spell?" Buffy asked.

Tara shook her head nervously. "Not exactly," she told her. "Anya has...decided on a career change. You know, one that involves her being...you know...again."

Buffy was wide-eyed as she stared at Anya. "Oh," she said simply, no other words coming after. "You mean that you're all demony again? As in vengeance and death and torturing unfaithful men?"

"It's not limited to cheaters," Anya said simply. "Or men, for that matter."

Buffy took a minute to process the information, before switching back to Slayer mode. "So, Willow's all wrathy..." she said. "Why don't you go to her? Isn't that your gig?"

"Normally, I'd have to..." Anya said defensively, "but she doesn't want me."

Buffy nodded, understanding the meaning in the Demon's words. "She wants to do it herself."

Anya nodded. "Yeah."

"Look, Anya, we don't have much time," Buffy said quickly. "Which side of this are you on?"

Anya hesitated, looking between them, not quite sure which way to go.

"If you know where she is, you can help us," Tara said desperately. "Please..."

Anya stood up, sighing and rolling her eyes. "I'll help," she told them, the decision made but clearly not happy about it. "But I'm helping Willow," she pointed out. "I'm doing it for Xander." At Buffy and Tara's nods, she knew they understood the stipulations. "She's close to him," she told them. "He's in the woods."

* * *

If Willow had been her normal self, she wouldn't have dared gone near the woods at night, at least not without Buffy and a whole armoury to protect her. Not tonight, though. Tonight **she** was the danger out here, no demon in their right mind would even think of attacking her, and she knew that.

When she looked up and around her, it didn't seem like there were any stars in the sky, and that seemed apt to her, because she didn't feel like she would ever be able to look at them the same now, not when she'd spent so much time with Xander when they were younger watching the tiny masses of gas and making shapes and names out of them. She'd tried the same thing with Tara a few times, too, but it hadn't been nearly as funny as it had been with him.

With the bloody shirt still in her hand, Willow walked calmly through the dense forest woodland. The bushes jutted into the pathway and the long, thick branches from the trees that hung down bent out of the way, her will controlling them with barely any effort or acknowledgement from her.

* * *

In another part of the same woods, Warren was running for his life, feet tripping over themselves, pushing bushes and branches out of the way as he struggled through the forestry, breathing heavily, his eyes scanning his surroundings in fright, his hands firmly holding his backpack to his frame.

* * *

There was a disturbing smile on Willow's face as she came to a clearing in the land, a smile that looked out of place with the starkness of her dark hair and pale complexion. She looked around, the night air unsurprisingly calm and contradicting the vengeance she felt inside. "Run all night, Warren," she said in a singsong voice that carried through the breeze to his ears. "I'll still find—" She was interrupted when something hit her from behind with a great force, making her fall with a heavy thud face-first onto the ground, the shirt falling from her grasp forgotten.

Warren stood over her body, his hands still on the long-handled axe embedded in Willow's back. Finally he let go of the weapon, staring down at her, looking nervous, waiting for her to move, to react. A couple of seconds passed by, moments feeling hours to him, before he finally began to smile a little with self-importance, relief forming on his hard, square features.

Suddenly, as if waiting for him to feel safe, waiting for him to smile, Willow rose to her feet, lifted by the magick within her. She turned to face Warren's horribly shocked and terrified expression, reaching her arm around to her back where the weapon was still stuck and gave it a yank. "Axe," she said coldly, throwing the object to the ground, "not gonna cut it."

Warren broke into a run again, panting heavily in fear of the witch, Willow walking leisurely behind him as he reached into the backpack, pulling something from it. He came to a stop in the forest as he yanked a pin from atop the object he had just retrieved from his bag – a small, square, wooden box – and watched as small, metal wings appeared at the sides. He grinned to himself with some fear and some excitement as the wings began to flap lightly in the wind, the little box lifting from his palm, eventually picking up enough momentum with its flitting movements to zoom away like a bat into the night.

* * *

She didn't run after him. He wasn't worth the sweat or the energy. She'd catch up with him sooner or later, she knew that, so calmly she walked through the shrubs. She didn't look surprised when she saw something flying towards her, just curious when the winged box that Warren had let loose a few moments ago stopped a few inches away from her, hanging in the air. As the box let loose a loud explosion that seemed impossible for something that was so small a few seconds ago, fire and energy emanating from the thing, she reacted without fear.

"Freeze," she called out. Instead of the force of the explosion expanding continuously outwards to spread and wreak chaos on whatever it could find, it simply surrounded her in a shimmering ball of solidified air and fire at her command, like someone had frozen time. She effortlessly stepped forward out of the orb, shattering it as she passed through its atmosphere effortlessly into large pieces like fragmented glass.

Thinking he had gotten a reprieve, that he'd bought himself some time, even though in the horror movies he'd seen this was when the bad guy popped up out of nowhere, he continued his escape, running desperately through the woodlands, looking back over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the surrounding for any sign of her. When he did eventually turn back to the direction he was heading in, there she was, black-eyed and waiting, different to how she had looked on the few occasions he'd seen her before. The sight of her shocked him into stopping short, taking large gulps of air with exhaustion and fright.

"That's cute," he said, laughing nervously. "That's a cute trick."

She stayed silent, not wanting to waste words on this pathetic waste of a human body, and she slowly advanced towards him, her pace menacing and sure, making him back away from her, more nervous and scared than he had been before.

"It was an accident, you know," he blurted out nervously.

"Oh," she told him coldly, "You mean, instead of killing one best friend, you killed the other one."

"It..." he stammered out, "It wasn't personal, that's all." Looking around, he tried to conspicuously grasp around in his pants pocket, obviously looking for something, still backing away from her and her fury as she continued advancing on him certainly.

"Well, this is," she told him as he turned to run away, holding out both of her hands and sending out a huge blast of magical energy at the man, the sight purple and black and more forceful than she had used on Buffy and Tara, knocking him from his feet in one sweep.

He quickly pulled his arms from the backpack he had been trying to hold onto, his jacket coming off in the process. "Capture!" he yelled, throwing something from his sack at Willow that looked like a small ball of blue slime.

The substance hit her in the stomach, although it wasn't long before it grew, expanding first around her torso and pinning her arms to her sides, and then moving as if with a mind of its own up and down her sides until her whole body and head were immersed in a shimmering, transparent blue. She watched from inside the mystical hold as he seized his opportunity to jump to his feet and run again, leaving his bag of tricks behind him. Her black eyes began to glow a fiery orange, melting two holes in the energy, the heat passing through the substance until the cocoon slid down her body and dripped to the ground like hot molten lava.

The darkness overtook her again, her eyes now back to black, as she stood where she was, still not attempting to run after him. "Irritite," she said, the Latin translation of the word 'entangle', and waited for it to take hold.

Warren could feel exhaustion cutting into his bones, but he couldn't stop, couldn't risk her catching him again. Then, as if waiting for him, the vines from the nearby trees whipped out and took hold of him, wrapping around his legs and then his wrists. He was trapped, spread-eagled between two of the huge trees, looking around him in total shock and terror, panting heavily.

She calmly walked around one of the trees and stood in front of him. "Cute tricks," she told him.

"Look, I'm sorry for shooting you, okay?" he stammered out.

"Does it look like that's what's bothering me?" she asked.

"You're really asking for it, you know that?" he said angrily.

"I'm asking for it?" she asked him incredulously.

"I'm gonna walk away from this," he told her. "And when I do, you're gonna beg to go join your little friend."

Willow frowned, realising something as he waited helplessly for her to do whatever she wanted to do. "He wasn't your first..." she told him sadly.

Warren looked around nervously. "Uh... first who?" he asked with a failing mask of oblivion.

"Xander," she told him. "He wasn't the first person you killed. There was a girl..."

Warren shook his head. "I don't know what you're talk—"

"Reveal!" Willow called.

"I should have strangled you in your sleep," Came a haunting voice to Warren's ears. He quickly looked around him for the owner, a girl stepping out from behind the same tree Willow had appeared from not long ago. The girl, Katrina, Warren's own ex-girlfriend fixed her dead eyes on him, her skin deathly pale. "Back when we shared a bed," she continued. "I should have done the world a favour."

"It's a trick," Warren said loudly, a nervous laugh in his voice.

"Why, Warren?" Katrina asked him sadly. "You could have just let me go."

He couldn't look at his victim, kept his eyes fixated on Willow and his surroundings, anywhere but at the dead girl as the witch watched him calmly. "Make it shut up!" he yelled at her. "Make it go away."

"It didn't have be like that," Katrina told him.

Warren's eyes and nostrils flared in anger. "I'm not kidding!" he yelled at Willow.

"How could you say you loved me," Katrina continued, "and do that to me?"

Warren suddenly shipped his head around to look at her, glaring furiously. "Because you deserved it, bitch!" he screamed, only to find that she was gone.

"Because you liked it," Willow sneered at him.

"Oh, **shut up!**" Warren told her.

"You never felt you had the power with her," Willow said. "Not until you killed her."

"Women," Warren said viciously, laughing nastily. "You know, you're just like the rest of them. Mind games."

"You get off on it," she said, moving closer to him, watching as he trembled in fear, despite the bravado. "That's why you had a mad-on for the Slayer. She was your big O, wasn't she, Warren?"

"Are you done yet?" Warren spat at her, still shaking. "Or can we talk some more about our feelings?"

* * *

Anya hurried through the forest, Buffy and Tara close behind, following curiously.

"What's happening?" Buffy asked her. "What do you feel?"

""She's stronger now," Anya told them. "Close."

"What about Warren?" Tara asked. "Has she—"

"He's still alive," Anya said. "She's not done."

* * *

"Help!" Warren yelled desperately into the night. He looked at Willow, his eyes pleading his case. "Let me go," he said, before raising his voice again. "Somebody!" he yelled out. "Help!!"

"What's the matter?" Willow asked, a smile on her face. "Thought you wanted to talk."

"No," Warren said quietly.

"Okay," she said, opening her hand to reveal the bullet that had come from her own wound earlier. "I'll talk." She waved her other hand, her free hand, and Warren's shirt ripped open.

"What-what are you doing?" Warren asked nervously.

"Shhh," she told him.

Warren's eyes were wide, seriously freaked. "Hey, hey, I'm sorry, okay?" he told her pleadingly. "I'm sorry."

She held the bullet in the air between her thumb and her forefinger, the small metal object an inch or so from Warren's bare chest, right over the place where his heart beat somewhere inside him, the same place the bullet had hit Xander. She let go of the bullet, leaving it to hover in the air, a look of absolute hatred on her face.

"Wanna know what a bullet feels like, Warren?" she asked him. "A real one?" When he looked down at the bullet nervously, and then back at her, she continued. "It's not like in the comics," she told him.

"No," Warren said. "No."

"I think you need to," she said with feeling, emphasis on her words. "**Feel** it."

The bullet moved forward slowly, pushing its way through the hair on his chest, through the first layers of skin and muscle. "Oh, god!" Warren cried out in pain. "Stop it!"

She watched his face contorting in pain, corresponding with the bullet moving through him. "It's not going to make a neat little hole," she told him factually and calmly. "First, it'll obliterate your internal organs. Your lung will collapse. Feels like drowning."

"Please," Warren begged. "No."

The bullet continued to penetrate his body, slowly and horrifically, and Willow continued to watch him. "When it finally hits your spine," she told him, "it'll blow your central nervous system."

"Oh, please, stop, god!" he begged, his voice strained, tears in his eyes now as the pain coursed through every part of his body, his face covered in perspiration as he tried to struggle free from his bonds. "Please—"

"I'm talking!" Willow told him angrily, lifting a hand in the air gesturing across Warren's face, his lips suddenly sewing shut from her motion with large, ugly pieces of black thread, making him whimper and groan behind them, his eyes wide in fear. "The pain will be unbearable, but you won't be able to move," she told him.

"Bullet usually travels faster than this, of course. But the dying? It'll seem like it takes forever." She paused, affected by her own words, looking at the tiny wound in his chest that she had caused, watching as he grunted behind his restraints and squeezed his eyes closed in pain.

"Something, isn't it?" she said pensively. "One tiny piece of metal destroys everything." She ignored him when he groaned loudly, continuing her own thoughts. "It ripped his insides out..." she said quietly. "Took his smile away. From me. From the world."

She looked him in the eyes again, shaking off that feeling again, satisfied that her actions were causing this change in him, his trembling and groans of pain and fear giving her some sense of achievement. "Now the one person who should be here is gone..." she told him, "...and a waste like you gets to live. He was worth a million of you, do you know that?" she asked. "Probably more..."

The hole in his chest was bleeding now, not a lot, the bullet hadn't gone that far yet, but enough to fill her nostrils with the coppery, metallic scent. "Tiny piece of metal," she repeated through clenched teeth. "Can you feel it now?

"I said, **can you feel it**?" Willow yelled at Warren, listening to his continued grunts through his sewn-up lips, until she eventually waved her hand in the air again, the stitches disappearing.

"Please!" Warren screamed in pain. "God! I did wrong, I see that now. I need-I need jail!" he begged her, his voice breaking with sobs. "I need..." he trailed off. "...But you," he told her, stammering out his words with uncertainty and pain clouding his thoughts, "You don't want this," he said. "You're-you're not a bad person. Not like me."

Willow simply glared at him, ready for her next move.

"Willow!" she heard a familiar voice yell.

The witch looked over to where her friends stood. Buffy, Anya and Tara were a few hundred feet away from her, rushing forward with worried expressions, their eyes pleading with her to stop.

"Oh," Warren said, his eyes flicking from her to them and back to her again, "and when you get caught," he told her, "you'll lose them too. Your friends." He was panting now, the bullet taking its toll on him. "You don't want that," he told her desperately. "I know you're in pain, but—"

Willow sneered at him. "Bored now," she said simply, making a casual gesture with her hand, an unseen bolt of magic ripping through the air to Warren as he yelled out in agony, tearing his skin off his body in one single piece and breaking as it hit the air, bloodying up the forest.

"Oh, my goddess..." Tara said to herself in disgust.

Willow stood looking at Warren's skinless body, unaffected by the sight of it sagging limp against the vines that still held him in place.

Buffy's face crumpled with horror. "What did you do??" she asked her in disgust. When Willow didn't respond, simply carried on watching the body, she raised her voice. "Willow, what did you do?"

She looked over at her friends, and then back at the body, no emotion or hint of regret at what she had done. There was no hand gesture or any kind of warning the slumped body burst into flames and burnt to nothing in the blink of an eye. Willow turned to the others. "One down..." she said calmly.

Smoke began to furl up from the ground, around Willow's body as her eyes flashed with the orange and red fire she had used earlier. Lightening flashed brightly in purple and black as her whole body dissipated into smoke and disappeared, leaving the people who loved her staring in horror.


	5. Chapter Five

A/N: A lot of this part is mostly transcribed scenes from the episodes with the difference of some of the dialogue.

* * *

Buffy led Anya and Tara along the boundary of the woods, all of them moving with an uninterrupted urgency as they passed through the trees and bushes, heading out of the forests to find Willow and to get away from the memories of the horrific event they had just witnessed.

"Come on," Buffy told them, looking back to urge them along. "We have to keep moving."

Tara stopped, breathless, against a tree, her arm across her stomach and her head held low. "I think I'm gonna be sick..." she told them, a hand over her mouth.

"Again?" Anya asked testily.

Buffy stopped, heading back to Tara. "Tara," she said, gently but urgently, the Slayer in her taking charge of the situation. "We don't have time."

"I know," Tara said softly. "It's just...what happened back there, the sounds of it. The smell..." she suppressed another wave of nausea and light-headedness.

Buffy nodded solemnly, her eyes sad. "I know," she said quietly.

Tara looked up at her, her face a mask of pain and fear. "Willow did that," she said, clearly shaken.

"That's why we have to move," Buffy told her firmly. She placed a hand on Tara's shoulder, making eye contact with the other girl, trying to give her some kind of support, a gesture that Tara acknowledged with a subtle nod. They moved on from where they had stood, moving faster. "You heard what she said," Buffy said. "'One down'."

"So we're thinking 'two to go'?" Anya asked. "Jonathan. And, whatsisface, the other guy?"

"Andrew," Buffy informed them. "Both of them are just sitting in the county jail without a clue Willow's coming."

Tara looked surprised, even though the thought had been in the back of her own mind, but still she was seeking some kind of reassurance that it was going to be okay. "You don't think she's gonna kill them too?" she asked. "She wouldn't," she said, unsure of her own words. "It doesn't make sense."

"Willow's got an addictive personality," Buffy told her. "And she's just tasted blood." She stopped walking, standing still in the woods and looking around with a frustrated expression. "She could be there already."

"No, she couldn't," Tara told them. "A witch at her level? She could only go airborne."

"Which means?" Buffy asked. "In non-magick terms?"

"It's a thing," Anya said with a shrug. "Very flashy, impresses the locals, but it does take longer."

Buffy looked confused. "Longer than what?"

"Teleporting," the demon said simply, disappearing out of sight in a swirl of mystical energy, leaving the other girls behind.

"Right," Buffy said. "Vengeance Demon."

"At least she'll get there first," Tara pointed out.

"And I'm counting the ways that could go wrong," Buffy said as they resumed their quest to get out of the woods, her leading the way.

Tara looked at Buffy. "Anya can handle herself."

"Against Willow?" Buffy asked. "Tonight? Don't be too sure."

"She's got to come down sometime," Tara said. "I mean, back there she was out of her head, running on grief and Magicks."

"Doesn't matter," Buffy said seriously. "Willow just killed somebody. Killing changes you. Believe me, I know."

"Warren was a murderer," Tara said quietly, trying not to look at Buffy. "I mean, Xander's gone..."

"I know," Buffy told her, the memory of seeing his dead body coming back to her, engraining itself into her memory, making her realise that she'd always have that with her, just like she had the sight of her mother's body. "Warren was a stone cold killer," she said. "Maybe he had it coming, but Jonathan and Andrew don't."

Tara remained quiet, thinking to herself, before turning to Buffy pensively. "This is still Willow we're dealing with, right?" she asked.

"You tell me," Buffy told her. "I mean, you know more about this magick stuff than I do. I hope it is. I mean, I want to believe that as much as you do, but whatever she's going through, we gotta stop her. I just can't believe she's doing this..."

"You can't?" Tara asked. "I thought you'd have understood."

"I deal with death every day," Buffy said sadly. "It's a waste to cause more."

"She has to do something," Tara explained. "I mean, she feels like she's going to explode if someone doesn't pay for what happened. It's this power inside of her... If that bullet had hit you, Dawn, Giles...I think she still would have started on the same path. Whoever it was, she would have tried to bring them back. But because it's Xander...she's gone to extremes."

"How do you figure that?"

"She loved him," Tara said simply.

"So did I," Buffy countered, her tone more defensive than she'd intended.

"I know," the witch said sadly. "But not like she did. I mean, I always knew that he meant a lot to her. Ever since I met her, she always talked about him. I could see how much she cared for him when I looked at her, or when I watched them together. It was this deep connection between their aura's that I can't describe, something that could never be broken, except..."

"Except by death..." Buffy finished for her softly.

"Yeah," Tara said. "I just thought...I mean, you were there with them. Those years when they were best friends through everything, when all they had was each other."

"Yeah," Buffy said sadly. "And maybe if I hadn't been then Xander wouldn't be dead and Willow wouldn't be on a homicidal rampage. If I hadn't brought them into my crazy, messed up world, he wouldn't have been there."

"You can't blame yourself for this, Buffy," Tara told her. "If you hadn't been there, they would have both died a long time ago in this town."

Buffy shook her head, willing away the tears in her eyes. "We need to concentrate on stopping Willow," she said with resolve as they moved through the forestry with a hurried pace. "And maybe we can if we get to the..." they reached the clearing in mass of trees to where they had parked the car earlier, only to find the vehicle had been demolished. "...Car..." Buffy finished.

Tara looked at the wreck with shock. The hood was up, the steel somehow contorted into strange shapes while steam poured out from beneath it, the engine and everything else under that obviously destroyed. The tyres were flat to the ground, something sharp probably used to slash them, the windows shattered, a spider web effect on them. "Willow..." she said quietly.

Buffy sighed loudly. "Looks like she wants to finish the job without us tagging along," she said impatiently. "Meet me at the jail."

"Sure," Tara said. "But how are you gonna..." Before she could even finish the sentence, Buffy had taken off running. Tara looked after her, watching as she moved like a wild animal, her pace hitting a speed the witch couldn't even be sure of as she leapt over a felled tree in the short distance without even breaking her stride.

She stood there, alone and feeling useless as Buffy disappeared into the night. "Okay, then," Tara said to herself. "I'll just... catch up. She's only my girlfriend, you know. No big deal, just..." She trailed off softly, glaring at the long road ahead of her. "...Glad I can help..." she said grimly.

* * *

Jonathon stood at the bars of the cell, propped against them, forlornly looking out onto the depressing hallway of the Sunnydale Police Station, the surroundings reflecting his mood.

Behind him was Andrew, still sat on the bunk, animatedly distracted as he methodically examined parts of his own body – hair, teeth, fingernails – for something that even he wasn't quite sure of. He stopped as if straining his hearing to listen for something. "Dude," he said to Jonathon. "Move, like, a foot to your left."

Jonathon remained immobile, barely even bothering himself to look at his cellmate. "What for?" he asked.

"I'm trying to hear something," Andrew told him, still listening.

"Like what?"

Andrew looked around suspiciously to make sure there was no one else in the vicinity to hear him. "Signals..." he whispered harshly.

Jonathon looked at him for a moment. "Oh, for crying out loud!" he exclaimed angrily. "Signals?" he asked. "Who from, your probe-happy alien friends? Say, maybe we can trade in some cigarettes for tin foil - make you a nice, little antenna hat."

"Laugh it up, Fuzzball," Andrew spat at him. "I figured it out. Warren never abandoned us. Well, not me, anyway," he said, continuing to check his body determinedly. "This is like his test. If we can just figure out how he's communicating with us, we'll be, you know, worthy."

"You're checking for implants?" Jonathon asked incredulously, crossing his arms over his chest.

Andrew glared at him defensively. "Lex Luthor had a false epidermis escape kit in Superman versus the Amazing Spider-Man Treasury edition—"

"Okay, first of all," Jonathon told him, cutting him off, "those were sonic disrupters and second of all ...you are sadness personified. Waiting for Warren? Yeah, maybe he'll bust us out of here on Santa's magic sleigh."

Andrew stopped checking himself, looking hurt and offended and standing up to confront his cellmate. "I'm telling him you said that."

"Why wait?" Jonathon said, squaring up to his former friend. "I'll tell him myself." He jerked Andrew's elbow towards his own face, using the limb like a microphone while the person still attached to it looked uncomfortable. "Come in, Warren," he said dryly. "Do you read me? Your girlfriend's pathetic, over."

Andrew jerked his arm back, clearly pissed, ready for a fight. "Shut up, Jerk-athan!" he yelled at him. "See this? This is why we get the jet packs and all you get is left behind."

"So you admit it?"

"Why not?" Andrew said with a shrug. "You were out of the Trio a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away and you know why, little feller?" he asked intensely. "No respect for the chain of command."

"Yeah, look how far it got you," Jonathon countered. "Checking every hole in your sad little body for transmitters that don't exist."

"Oh, I'll find it if I have to check every hole in my body and yours," Andrew said, shoving Jonathon's shoulder with his hand.

Jonathon shoved back, just as hard, making Andrew stumble back, resulting in Andrew lunging for Jonathon, grabbing him as they began to tussle pathetically, each as weak as the other.

"Get off!" Jonathon complained.

"Make me!" Andrew said, shoving him.

Jonathon shoved him back and took his chance to get across to the other side of the cell. They glared at one another, about to attack, lunging in synchronicity. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, they were both blown back against the cell walls as Anya teleported in, standing in the centre of the cell as the boys stared at her, totally aghast.

Andrew looked at Jonathon in disbelief. "You do that?"

Jonathon emphatically shook his head.

Anya looked around the cell in surprise. "There you two are," she said quickly to the shocked boys. "Listen to me. We have to get you out of here now or you'll both be killed." She turned to the bars of the cell, craning her neck as she looked down the hall. "Guard!" she called out.

"What's going on?" Jonathon asked suspiciously.

"Guard!" Anya yelled again.

"Stop that!" Andrew told her, turning to Jonathon. "I don't trust her. Do you trust her? This is major uncool."

"Anya," Jonathon said slowly. "You gotta break this down for us a little, or—"

Anya whirled around from the bars of the cell, an angry look on her face as she looked between the two of them. "Warren came after Buffy with a gun," she said, talking quickly. "Warren missed. Warren shot Xander. Warren shot Willow. Willow's alive. Xander's dead. Willow decided on a little payback and, being the most powerful Wicca in the western hemisphere, she got it. With interest."

"Xander?" Jonathon asked. "But he..." he looked at Anya. "Well, we weren't exactly friends, but he was always nice to me at school. You know, didn't call me short all the time and give me wedgies like the other kids. I...I liked him..."

"Wh-what about Warren?" Andrew asked, suddenly worried.

"She killed him," Anya said bluntly. "Ripped him apart and bloodied up the forest doing it. Now she's coming here and the two of you are next."

"Oh, my God..." Andrew said quietly, suddenly sounding lost. "Warren..."

"Oh, my God..." Jonathon said quietly, then wide-eyed in realisation. "**Me**..." he grabbed hold of the bars of the cells. "GUARD!" he yelled at the top of his voice.

"But we didn't do anything..." Andrew said.

"GUARD!"

Having heard all the yelling and commotion coming from his charges, a grumpy-looking police officer approached the cell, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "All right, all right," he told them impatiently and sounding annoyed. "What are you...?" he trailed off as his eyes came to rest on the woman in the cell with them. "Who the hell are you?" he asked.

"Something's coming," Anya told the officer. "Something bad. You have to let these men out of here or I guarantee you there **will** be hell to pay."

The officer looked her over in confusion, taking his time as he rubbed his head. "Okay, and, uh...what exactly's coming?" he asked.

"One of the many things in this world you are not prepared to deal with."

"That a fact?" the officer asked, obviously amused.

"Yes," she told him. "And we're running out of time. Just believe me when I tell you..." she trailed off, disappearing in front of the man's unbelieving eyes, teleporting out of the cell and re-appearing in front of him on the other side of the bars before he could even grasp what was happening. "...These things are real. They're dangerous. And they're coming."

* * *

Outside the same building, the Police Station, a patrol officer sat in his parked squad car, finishing writing up his nightly report of gangs on PCP terrorising the Sunnydale residents and overgrown animals lurking in the shadows, the crackling sound of the radio filling the vehicle. The cup of coffee that he had left sitting on the dashboard of the car slowly began to vibrate, a noise that slowly drew his attention from his writing, a bright source of light appearing at the side of the car.

The man turned to look across the parking lot of the station where nothing seemed out of ordinary as the bits of garbage that had missed the can a few feet away blew around the ground. The only thing that did seem strange was the garbage mysteriously beginning to swirl in a vortex of energy as bits of light, something like lightening, began to pop and crackle. He put down his report, the whistling stopped, as he looked around, interested now, to see the light coalescing until it erupted into one enormous flash of light, with black and purple power energies and black smoke.

The energy dissipated, revealing a girl stood where the vortex had been with black hair and, for all he could see, black eyes to match, her head bowed in purpose. She soon began to move, striding towards the building intently, when the officer decided to intervene. Seeing her coming his way, he stepped out of the vehicle, his hand on his standard issue 9mm firearm in the holster around his waist.

"What the hell was that?" he asked her, not entirely shocked at what he had witnessed because, well, he lived in Sunnydale. "Listen, I don't know what you think you're doing, but you better—"

"Take a nap," Willow told him, not breaking her stride or raising her voice to him.

On her words, the patrol officer fell against his vehicle, hitting the ground, slumped.

Willow didn't notice or care. She stood before the Sunnydale Police Station, sizing the place up like an opponent, probing the place with her eyes for signs of weakness. Her gaze quickly travelled from the front entrance of the building to the second storey and the cinder-blocked window spaces. She stared at one just above the main entrance, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

Slowly, to the sound of stone grinding against stone, cracks began to appear in and around the plaster surrounding one of the blocked windows. Bits of cement flaked off, hitting the ground, crumbling as one of the cinder blocks within the window space began to vibrate, shake, and pull loose from its moorings.

* * *

"...So please," Anya told the officer who still didn't believe her desperately, "Stop looking at me like it's your first trip to the circus and do your job. Let them out!" Suddenly, the sound of rumbling began to grow around them. She looked around for the source, as did the men.

"Oh, what the hell is that?" Andrew asked, clearly afraid.

"It's her," Jonathon said simply.

Behind them, in the wall of the cell, an entire cinder block ripped itself free of its confines, something yanking it violently from its cemented space with gusto, the action making Jonathon and Andrew jump back, startled.

Lights from outside poured into the relatively dark cell as dust swirled around, making the officer snap out of his confusion, suddenly looking official. "You three," he told them. "Stay here."

"Oh, like we have a choice!" Andrew told the policeman with desperate dryness.

"I said, don't move. You'll be safe here."

"Were you listening?" Anya yelled after the departing officer. "This is the one place they **won't** be safe!"

* * *

The half a dozen or so police officers that had been milling around in the ground storey of their police station ran out of the building, obviously alerted by the now-earthquake-like rumbling all around them. Searching for the source of the commotion, they looked around the parking lot, finding a lone girl. Willow.

She stood alone as cinder blocks and plaster flew past her, flew over their heads, crashing to the ground as if she were tossing them over her shoulder, and the cops took their opportunity to rush her. Annoyed at the interruption, she bowed her head, looking right at them. "Back off," she told them.

On her command, half of the group lifted off their feet and flew back from her like they had been tossed by the Slayer, landing hard on the pavement and crashing into the parked patrol cars.

Willow turned her attention back to the window above her.

* * *

Buffy skidded to a halt as she came running around the side of the police station, taking in the chaotic scene before her and she suddenly got the guilty feeling back inside of her. She knew she had to make a decision now and she had to make it fast. She rushed back around the side of the place to find the side door, grabbing hold of the handle and yanking, hard, on it to splinter the wood as the lock came away with the opening door, making an entrance for herself.

* * *

Jonathon and Andrew pressed themselves away from the wreckage as another cinder block pulled itself free from the wall, the hole in the support now a gaping wound of stone and cement as more bricks flew away, exposing them more and more to the outside world with every passing moment.

"Stop it! Just, stop!" Andrew yelled to the open wall, turning to Jonathon while he freaked out. "Why is she doing this?" he asked. "Tell her! We didn't do anything."

"Yes we did," Jonathon told him, accepting responsibility. "We signed on. We teamed up. We wanted to see where all our plans would take us, well take a look." More bricks flew from the window, the hole nearly big enough to walk through now. "This is it. The end of the road."

"Maybe, for you. Anya!" Andrew yelled at the demon. "Teleport us out of here. Please, take us with you!"

"I can't," she told them. "It doesn't work that way."

"Oh, God," Andrew said, cowering further into the wall. "HEEELP!"

* * *

Inside of the police station, the Emergency Exit door shattered as Buffy's foot crashed through it loudly, alarms instantly blaring. She ignored the sounds, looking around to find herself in one of the side corridors as a small group of more police officers rushed through the main entrance to the parking lot. Unseen by them, Buffy looked around, getting her bearings, and hearing the sounds of demolition coming from upstairs.

She took the stairs three at a time, eventually arriving at a doorway at the end of the cell hall after trying the handle and finding it expectedly locked, she took a step back, ramming her shoulder forward into it, satisfied when it gave way.

* * *

The heavy lifting done, Willow looked up at the gap made by the departed cinder blocks and bricks. She smiled, something that looked strange on her face, as she saw that the hole in the wall was now big enough for her to fit through. Willow looked eerily calm as she lowered her hands, the cops now surrounding her cautiously with the guns drawn.

"Gotta fly," she said, flying from her feet, straight towards the hole in the second storey cell wall. Seconds later, she appeared at the entrance, ready to claim her vengeance on the boys, only to find the cell empty, save for Anya standing in the hallway.

"Buffy..." Willow said to herself, taking in the sight of the cell bars that had been clearly ripped apart by someone with extreme strength.

"Willow," Anya began, "Just, stop for a second and listen to—"

With a single, powerful gesture, Willow blasted Anya painfully away in a swirl of light and energy, causing the other girl to smash, hard, into the hallway wall, sliding down the structure and slumping to the ground, conscious but in pain.

Willow whipped her head around, getting the scent of those she was after as her eyes turned completely to black, looking furious as her mouth opened slowly, growing wider and wider as an inhuman scream erupted from within her. The sound was like a thousand banshees dying in terrible pain as her face contorted into terrible rage, easily drowning out the alarm bells that were still ringing around the building.


	6. Chapter Six

Buffy hurriedly shoved the two nerds into the back seat of the patrol car Tara had pulled up to the kerb with through the open door, closing it behind them. She rapped on the roof of the car. "Go! Go!" she yelled to Tara, who sat in the driving seat. She waited for the car to gather speed, running alongside it until she managed to pull open the passenger door and jump in herself. "Is she coming?" she asked Tara, who was accelerating and watching for any sign of the disgruntled witch through the rear view mirror.

"I don't see anything," Tara said, narrowing her eyes as she strained to see behind the moving car.

Buffy turned back in her seat, looking at two people who were seriously scared. "You guys all right?" she asked them. When she received to response from them, she rephrased the question. "Are you injured?"

"No," Jonathon told her, partially distracted by his near-death experience and stammering slightly. "I-I don't think so."

"Where are you taking us?" Andrew asked.

Buffy turned back in her seat. "We'll find someplace safe and we'll keep you there until we can stop Willow."

"'Run and hide'?" Andrew scoffed. "That's your brilliant plan?"

"I don't believe this..." Jonathon grumbled.

"Boys?" Buffy said, "If you don't knock it off, I will get Tara to pull this car over and you can just walk to your painful deaths from here."

"I don't get it," Jonathon said, wondering aloud. "Willow's a witch. Why doesn't she just, you know, wave her arms and make us dead?"

"Because she doesn't want you dead," Buffy told them. "She wants to kill you."

"But we didn't do anything!" Andrew whined.

Buffy turned around and punched the boy square in the nose, eliciting an 'ow' from him as he held his painful nose.

"I hate to admit it," Tara began, glancing at Buffy between watching the road and the mirrors, "but Jonathan may have a point. Why isn't she right here, right now? I mean, I never would have imagined she'd have this kind of power, and she definitely knows how to use it."

"Maybe," Buffy said with a shrug. "Maybe she's just getting her mojo up and running, or maybe she hasn't figured out how much power she really has yet." She paused, looking at the road ahead. "And neither have we. You said it yourself, this is beyond what even you knew."

"I guess we keep running, then."

"I still can't believe that was Willow," Jonathon said, almost to himself. "I mean, I've known her longer than either of you guys. Willow was...you know. She packed her own lunches and wore floods. And her and Xander were inseparable. They've been best friends since forever..." he looked at Buffy sadly, looking genuine for the first time since he had cast the Superstar spell in college. "I guess it's no wonder she's coming after us, huh?" he asked softly. "But it's just...she was always...just Willow."

The truth of the moment hit both Buffy and Tara and silence reigned in the car as they each thought about his words, the only sound the dull humming of the tyres on the tarmac highway roads. Then, surprising them all, a loud boom came from behind them, rocking the car violently and Tara struggled to keep control of the steering wheel.

"Geez it!" Jonathon yelled.

"What was that?" Andrew asked.

Tara looked out of the rear view mirror and shrugged. "Just Willow."

Buffy span around in her seat again to look out of the back windscreen, seeing only the grill of an eighteen-wheeler truck filling the glass, so close they were almost touching. She grabbed the rear view mirror and readjusted it so she could get a better look, looking from the grill up to the driver's cab where the man looked terrified and obviously not in control of the vehicle, struggling with the steering wheel in vain. Her gaze travelled upwards, resting on the figure stood on top of the cab, Willow's arms wide, her hair blowing in the wind, looking like the maidenhead on the ship from hell.

The truck hit the car again, the rocking beginning again.

"Any ideas?" Tara asked Buffy, obviously terrified.

"Drive faster," the Slayer told her.

Another hit from the truck rocked them all again as the squad car raced as fast as Tara could get it to go, pressing the accelerator to the floor in the attempt to get more speed from the vehicle, but finding that every time they gained a bit of distance from the truck, it caught up again. The grill hit the back fender again, the bumpers staying pressed together, the truck now pushing the car along the highway at high-speed as the eighteen-wheeler bore down on the much smaller car, the crunching sound of metal growing to a screeching that drowned out Jonathon and Andrew's screams of terror.

Buffy looked at Tara. "Well, this is faster..." she offered.

"She knows you're in this car too, right?" Jonathon asked them. Seeing them glancing at each other with a certain look, he panicked even more. "Right?"

Atop the eighteen-wheeler, a sweaty-looking Willow continued to exert control over the driver, but found herself shaking. The power waning, the two vehicles separated as the larger one slowed slightly, the squad car taking the advantage to gain a bit of distance.

Tara took the rear view mirror and positioned it so she could watch what was happening. "She's draining..." she said to Buffy, concerned.

"She's what-ing?" Buffy asked.

"We just have to keep going," Tara told her.

On top of the truck, Willow continued to shake, feverish and clammy as she fell forward, supporting herself on all fours as the driver grabbed back the steering wheel, pulling on it hard to the left. The truck made a radical turn, jack-knifing into a 90-degree angle upon itself.

Andrew, completely enthralled at the spectacle as he gazed out of the back window couldn't help himself. "Cool..."

The driver managed to correct the driving with the steering wheel as the squad car raced on ahead of him, its bumper scraping noisily along the highway, leaving nothing but sparks in its wake. Unbeknown to him, a girl shook on all fours on top of the truck, out of breath and out of magic, only managing to cling on to the cab by her fingertips, holding on without any mystical aid.

Willow turned her head and watched ruefully as the car and her prey drove away.

* * *

A key rattled frantically in the door of the Magic Box, eventually opening to reveal Anya, still unhappy at her treatment from Willow, followed by Tara and Buffy, then Andrew and Jonathon.

"Thanks, Anya," Tara told her sincerely, "For getting here so fast. It's a big help."

"No problem," Anya mumbled, not entirely meaning the sentiment.

Tara looked around the shop, her eyes scanning the place. "You know," she said, "I can usually sense power, especially Willow's," she told them. "But I'm getting nothing. Anya?" she asked. "What about you? Can you sense her?"

"Yeah," Buffy said, chipping in. "Knowing her location'd be a real big comfort right about now."

Anya stopped, waited for the demon in her to tell her, and then looked at them. "No. I can't," she told them. "And that means whatever she's feeling, it's gone way beyond simple vengeance."

"Did I mention the me needing comfort?" Buffy considered Anya's words carefully. "I guess whatever we've got here, we'd better grab it fast. This is going to be one of the first places she's gonna think to look for us."

"Then what are we doing here?" Andrew asked. As they all turned around to look at him, all annoyed, he shrunk under their glare. "You know, I could summon a demon to kill her," he suggested.

"And I could pull your heart out through your foot with a variety of different garden implements," Anya told him, snapping. "Believe me, I've done it before."

"No one is getting killed," Buffy said, trying to diffuse the situation, turning to Andrew. "Sit down," she told him. She looked at Anya. "We've got to find some kind of Magicks that'll stop Willow, or at least slow her down."

"But she drained the place," Tara pointed out, holding up a blank-faced textbook. "She took everything."

"Not everything," Anya said, an idea popping into her head as she rushed behind the counter, rummaging through drawers. She pulled out a small key, followed by a box that had been concealed in the counter, using the key to open it, and pulling out a thick book from it.

"What is it?" Tara asked.

"Book of protection spells," Anya told them. "Anti- Magic. Our last resort."

"Think we can work this stuff?"

Anya opened the book, scanning the pages. "Ah. Okay," she told them. "The good news is the text is intact. Bad news is I can't read a word of it. It's like in, ancient Sumerian or something."

Tara approached the counter, pulling the book around so she could look at it, while Jonathon tentatively approached them.

"Can I take a look at it?" he asked.

"Shut up," Buffy told him.

"Right," he said turning away. After a second he turned back to her. "I just thought, you know, as long as you're protecting us, the least I could do is..."

"I'm not protecting you, Jonathan," Buffy told him bluntly with menace in her eyes. "None of us are. We're doing this for Willow. And the only reason it happens to be your lucky day is because if Willow kills you, a line gets crossed, I lose another friend. And I **hate** losing."

"I get that. It's just... you know she's running out of power, right? I could tell, I could practically feel it," he looked away, embarrassed. "I've dabbled in the Magicks."

"Yeah, well, thanks for the offer," Buffy told them, walking away. "But if we need any help with this, we're gonna take Tara, who has experience at using witchcraft for something good, over Dabble Boy, who used it to summon demons that tried to kill me. Besides, I think Willow's in a league of her own here."

Jonathon looked away, embarrassed. "But still, running that hot for that long..." he shrugged. "Just a matter of time before you gotta re-charge. No matter how juiced up you are."

"Thank you. Now remember that thing we talked about?"

"About me shutting up?"

Buffy nodded, Jonathon doing the same as he pointed awkwardly to the table and sat beside Andrew, Tara taking Buffy aside while Anya worked on the text.

"Buffy, say this works," Tara said, concern marring her features. "Say we actually stop Willow from working all of this power. What then?"

"I talk to her," Buffy said simply.

"And say what?" Tara asked. "Not too long ago you were blaming yourself for all of this. How are you going to manage to convince her that everything's going to be okay when you can't even convince yourself?"

"Fine," Buffy told her. "You talk to her. She loves you. She'll listen to you."

"You think she's capable of hearing anything any of us actually say right now? She's hurting too much, Buffy. We all are."

Buffy just looked at Tara, realising that she didn't have all the answers, and what was worse was the fact that she knew it too. "Whatever she's going to do, she starts with these two," she said, looking back at the two of them. "They're the line she cannot cross. And if she's running low on the Magicks ...she's probably somewhere now trying to get it all back."

* * *

Things were slow-going at the shop as Anya turned page after page from the book she was hoping to use for a protection spell, while Tara stood over her shoulder, a small translation book in her hand as she glanced from page to page. They had been like this for the past hour or so, ever since Buffy had taken off to where she was hoping Willow would be.

Anya sighed huffily, not looking up at Tara. "You're too close," she told her.

"How am I supposed to read?" Tara asked innocently.

"I don't know," Anya snapped. "I'm staring right at this stuff and I can't read it."

Tara nodded slightly, taking a step back from her. "How's the translation coming? What have we got so far?"

"So far we've got 'the'..." she said, turning her page around. "Well, either 'the' or 'towards', I'm not really sure," she flung the pen down on the counter. "I can't do this. I'm in retail. Stupid ancient Sumerians..."

"It's not Sumerian," Jonathon told them calmly, walking over to the counter and standing before them, looking contrite. "I'm pretty sure it's Babylonian. The text is similar, but the dialect is completely different."

Tara put down the translation text. "Great. Babylonian," she said. "Because that's so much easier."

They put their heads back down, clearly wanting to get back on with their spell, and Jonathon walked back to his seat dejectedly, sitting next to Andrew.

Andrew shuffled closer to Jonathon, pissed. "Why are you helping them?"

"Because they're saving our lives, you moron." Jonathon told him.

"Uh-huh. And what then? Even if they kill that Wicca bitch, you think they're just let us walk? They own us."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Look around. You know Magick. We're in a **Magic Shop**. We can take them." Andrew shot a look at Anya and Tara discreetly, Jonathon following the direction of his eyes. "The books are sucked, dry, but so what? There's still like tons of supplies all around us. This is the best chance we're gonna get to make it out of here."

"And do what?"

"Start over. We can be the Duo. You and me, you can even be the leader, I swear, I'll take orders. I like taking orders. Just tell me what to do."

"You want an order?" Jonathon grabbed Andrew and shoved him, hard, into the bookshelf, causing the wooden unit to shudder. "Grow up."

"Hey!" Tara called from behind the counter. "Come on, guys. We're trying to work here and you just broke our concentration."

"Which means no protection spell..." Anya said in a singsong voice. "And Willow will make you two boneless chickens skinless, too."

"Then what?" Andrew spat at them. "You think your Li'l Witch buddy's gonna stop with us? You saw her! She's a truck-driving Magic Mamma. We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers, and not one of you bunch has the midiclorians to stop her."

Anya looked at Tara. "Did you understand anything the annoying virgin just said?"

Tara shook her head as Andrew retreated back to the table.

"But I suppose he does kind of have a point," Anya said. "What if Willow filets their sole and then comes after—"

"She won't," Tara said quickly.

"You don't know that."

"We're her friends, Anya. Her family. She would never hurt us."

"Yeah," Anya said, "Because that mojo she used on me back at the jail was done in a friendly and loving way. She's lost all reason, Tara, even when it comes to you. She knew you were in that squad vehicle when she decided to play toy cars with it, and she didn't even batter an eyelid."

"I know," Tara said resolutely. "And **I** have to stop her."

"Don't you mean 'we' have to stop her?" Anya asked. "You can't do this alone."

"But this is all my fault," Tara said, tears in her eyes.

"How?" Anya asked. "How can it possibly have been your fault?"

"Because...I let her get this far into the Magicks," Tara said. "I encouraged her. Ever since we first met, I encouraged her to cast more and more spells, to reach a higher level. I just didn't know it would affect her like this," she said honestly. "And then she got addicted and I couldn't be with her, but she was doing okay with it. But then, earlier..."

"Earlier what?" Anya asked suspiciously.

"She called Osiris, and I didn't stop her."

"Osiris?" Anya asked. "You mean the wicked-ass god who brought Buffy back?"

Tara nodded. "I didn't stop her," she said sadly. "I was going to, but...we had to see if there was a chance..." she looked down. "If I had stopped her from doing that, maybe she wouldn't be so furious now."

"Well, that would have been a plus," Anya told her. "But it's not your fault, Tara. I think she would've chosen this path, no matter what you did or didn't do."

"You think?"

"Have you ever known me to lie?" Anya asked. When Tara shook her head, Anya turned and faced her fully. "I know that you love her and you want to believe that everything's going to work out for the better here...but I can't see that happening. Nothing is ever going to be the same again. Not now."

Tara knew she was right, but it was a bitter realisation that was hard to swallow. When the other woman looked away, it was obvious she wasn't really thinking about Willow. She was thinking about Xander, and it hit her that during this whole situation, Anya had been holding it together.

Tara reached out a hand to touch the girl's shoulder where she was hunched over the book again, trying to piece together something from the text, only to snatch it back uncomfortably, watching her and wanting to comfort her, but it felt awkward, tense, and for a second she thought about leaving things.

But, then her conscience kicked it. This was Anya. They'd known each other for two years now, maybe even counted one another as friends, depending on the day of the week and how much money Tara spent in the shop, and it wasn't in Tara's nature to allow someone to feel this bad and not to help them if she could.

She took a deep breath, placing the translation book down on the counter softly, and again reached out her hand. This time it connected with Anya's shoulder, and the Vengeance Demon quickly snapped around to look at her.

"For God's sake," Anya said, "Are you trying to hit on me or something?"

"What?" Tara asked, taken aback and moving away from her a few paces while a furious blush crept up her face. "No, I-I-I-...o-o-of course not. I would never...and it was just..." She quietened when she really looked at Anya. She saw unshed tears glistening in her eyes, a forlorn expression and, despite her bravado, she saw someone who looked lost. "I just... I was wondering if you were okay?"

"Okay?" Anya asked, her eyes widening in something like anger. "You're asking me if I'm okay?" she yelled. "Of course I'm not okay!" she spat. "I may be a demon again but I still have feelings, you know - well, actually, I'm not supposed to, according to Halfrek and D'Hoffryn, unless it's 'vengeance, yay!' - and I know I'm not supposed to care because of what he did to me and I thought that I hated him.

"And I want to hate him, Tara, but instead I have all of these horrible, empty feelings inside of me, as if someone cracked me open like an egg and spooned out my insides and all I want to do is go back to the apartment we lived in and crawl into a ball and cry because he's gone, but I can't. I'm stuck here with a hippy Wicca and two freaks who I couldn't care less about."

Tara listened to the tirade and watched as tears began to fall from Anya's eyes. She stepped forward again, putting her arms cautiously around her and letting her cry. She looked at the nerds, found them watching, and glared at them, looking away when they finally broke eye contact and Anya lifted her head, wiping her eyes.

"Do you know something?" Anya asked. "You're the only person through this whole thing who has actually asked me if **I'm** okay. **Me**. Like no one else expects me to feel anything."

"That's not true," Tara told her.

"It isn't?" she asked. "Then why do I feel like the jilted ex-lover who hasn't got a right to anything? Why do I feel like I shouldn't be feeling like this? I mean, we were broken up. Doesn't that mean that I shouldn't care about him anymore?"

"It's normal for you to feel like this," Tara said softly. "I know that things between you and Xander weren't exactly resolved, but I know that you loved him. We all know that."

"But not enough, huh?" Anya asked sadly.

"What do you mean?"

"If I loved him so much...as much as I thought I did...why aren't I the one who's out there trying to kill the people to blame?" She threw a glance at Jonathon and Andrew, them avoiding looking at her at all costs. "I mean, I'm the demon here. I'm the one who's supposed to be evil or whatever. Why am I protecting the people Willow believes are responsible for contributing to his death?"

"Because you know it's the right thing to do," Tara said. "Because you know it's what Xander would have done." She looked at the two boys, both sitting there with their hands over their faces, like naughty children who thought that hiding their faces meant they had suddenly become invisible. "Willow's lost that reasoning in her grief. They may not be innocents in the strictest sense...but they didn't do this. They made a mistake and they're human."

"Yeah," Anya said, her face hardening in anger, "and look where mortality gets you. A speeding ticket to the morgue, that's where. It gets you a sling when you're attacked by vampires, or a cast when you're trying to fight a troll god, or a puncture wound when something tears its way out of a wall to stab you. How is mortality so great?" she demanded of Tara. "Please, tell me. What makes humans so very, very special that you can't smite them down when they do something bad like you can with a demon? Mortality is useless and it always will be."

Anya took a breath, intent on continuing. "And I knew something like this would happen!" she yelled. "I told him. Time and time again. This world he lived in, this fight he was in...it wasn't the **good** fight. It was the **stupid** fight. The **useless** fight. And no matter how much I begged him, how much sex I offered as a trade, he still wouldn't give it up. He was out there, night after night, with witches and vampires and slayers, and he had nothing. No powers, no talent except punning at the worst possible times, and stupidly trying to defend his so-called friends."

"Why is that stupid, Anya?" Tara asked. "Why is doing something brave and heroic stupid? He was a good person, Anya, and you know that nothing would have stopped him from fighting alongside Buffy. He wasn't talentless. He was a great person. Buffy knows that she wouldn't have come this far without him."

"But just look at how she treated everyone when she came back," Anya said bitterly. "She couldn't care less about anyone. About him."

"You know how hard things have been for her since she came back," Tara told her, shaking her head. "But she loved him, too, Anya. She's blaming herself for this. She feels responsible."

"She **is** responsible," Anya said flippantly. "And what about Willow?"

"What about Willow?"

"What she did to him," Anya complained. "She broke up his relationship with Cordelia, you know. And she wasn't exactly Best Friend of the Year, using him and ignoring him..."

"I know, but—"

"She's the whole reason I ended up in stupid Sunnydale!" Anya spat at her. "If her and her lips had stayed away from him, I wouldn't be feeling any of this... It's their fault I ended up being stuck here after that stupid wish Cordelia made. I should have left town when I had the chance."

"So..." Tara challenged, "You'd prefer to never have met him, to never have had him in your life?"

"I don't know," Anya said honestly. "Maybe."

"I don't believe that," Tara said. "You don't need me to tell you how great he was, because you already know. But he was kind, Anya, and he was loyal, and he was sweet, and gentle, and funny, and he would've protected you and Buffy and Willow through anything, because he loved you and his friends with all of his heart. Those were his talents."

"Then why did he leave me?" Anya asked in a small voice. "If he loved me so much...why did he walk away from me on our wedding day?"

"I can't pretend to know what was going on with him," Tara told her. "It's not like he ever explained to me. Why would he? But I know that he didn't want to hurt you. He told you that. He had doubts, and it was better that he didn't go through with it and hurt you more."

"But maybe if he had...he wouldn't be dead..."

"You can't keep going through all the 'maybe' and 'what if's," Tara told her. "I know it's hard, but you can't change anything."

"But there are so many things I wanted to tell him," Anya said. "Like, how I'm sorry that he had to see what happened with Spike. When I came back I wanted vengeance, and I tried so hard to curse him with all sorts of stuff, but it didn't work. But that night...it wasn't vengeance, Tara, not really...it was just, I don't know, solace. And I wanted to tell him that I loved him," she said sadly. "Because I did, however much he hurt me."

"I know," Tara told her, moving towards her and smoothing her back with her hand. "Look, I know you don't want to be here right now, so if you want to leave..."

"No," Anya said, pulling the book from the counter and looking at it again, shrugging Tara off. "I need to be here. If I go home, I'm just gonna fall apart...and I can't deal with that right now. I'll help you do this, stop Willow, because it's what Xander would have done. She meant a lot to him, despite how much I hated it, and however much I can see her point of view on this, losing her to this dark side or whatever...he wouldn't have wanted that. But when this is done..." she looked at Tara seriously. "I don't know if I'm still gonna be around."

Tara nodded in understanding. "I get that," she said. "It's just...we both know that things might get ugly with Willow and this crusade she's on. But if it gets really bad...

"It's a shame Xander isn't here," Anya said coldly. "He could have proposed again."

Tara put her head down awkwardly, searching for the right words. "...I need to know...are you gonna turn on us?" she asked. "Me and Buffy? Because, with you being a demon and her being the Slayer and with everything that happened when you had your powers before—"

"Don't worry," Anya said, cutting her off. "I have no plans to turn on either of you, but if it comes down to fight with me and Buffy...well, don't get me wrong, I like Buffy and all – sort of - but I just like me a whole lot better. She lets me get on with mine, I'll let her get on with hers."

"Okay..." Tara said uncomfortably as Anya went back to the book. "

* * *

It was the look on Willow's face that scared Dawn more than anything else. She wasn't the same person she knew anymore: there was no more red hair and shiny green eyes that lit up with the ever-present smile. Instead, it was jet-black hair and eyes and lips, dark purple and black veins running through her whiter-than-usual skin and an expression that was hard to classify. Her expression was cold, hard and set, totally unreadable in undeniable coldness, hints of underlying rage peeking through the calm exterior.

Dawn had come to Rack's to find Willow, but now there was a part of her that wished she hadn't. The first thing she had seen when she walked into his room was his lifeless, desiccated and mummified body floating in the air, his form drained of his energies and powers, sucked dry, although Dawn hadn't known that was the cause until she had seen Willow.

Apart from the appearance, Willow was acting differently too. More intimidating and imposing, at first trying to be flippant, but her voice had changed. It was empty, devoid of emotion as she told Dawn that she was fine, and the only spark she had seen that it was still the same person inside that shell was when she had mentioned Xander. She had asked Dawn if she missed him, to which she replied she did, of course, and Willow had said she understood that, and the crying because it was human, especially with the crush she knew Dawn had always had on him, even if it had waned a little in the past year or so.

Then things had gotten seriously scary when Willow had started talking about Dawn not always being human, that she used to be a ball of energy, and that somehow had led to her mocking her cruelly and threatening to turn her back. She had backed her up against a wall, trapping her there as the room began to crackle with energy, Willow's voice now echoing of its own accord.

"No more tears, Dawnie..." Willow told her.

Dawn closed her eyes, the tears that had been filling them pushing down her cheeks as she anticipated Willow's blow. Then, there was a noise. The sound of something solid breaking, cracking loudly and violently. Dawn opened her eyes as Willow turned to see Buffy standing in the now-open doorway.

"I think you need to get away from her," Buffy told her, thrown at the scene she was witnessing but determined. She crossed over to her sister, pulling her away from Willow. "You need to back down and think a minute, Will."

Willow shrugged. "Wasn't gonna hurt her, Buzzkill."

Dawn looked at her sister, clearly terrified. "She tried to turn me back..."

Buffy turned back to Willow. "You're attacking the people who love you now?"

"Only the ones in my way..." Willow said with a sneer.

"That's not..." Buffy began desperately. "You need help."

"Doing fine on my own, thanks."

"Dawn," Buffy said, turning to her sister and pushing her towards the open door. "Get out of here. Go."

Dawn did as she was told, but the door slammed closed, locked tight as Dawn looked back at Buffy and Willow.

"Don't," Willow said, unnerving them both. "We're all friends."

"Willow, I know what you want to do," Buffy began, "But listen to me: the forces inside you are incredibly powerful. They're strong, but **you're** stronger. You have to remember. You're still Willow."

"Let me tell you something about Willow," Willow told them, amused. "She's a loser. And she always has been. Everyone picked on Willow in junior high school, high school, up until college with her stupid mousy ways and now...Willow's a junkie."

"I can help."

"The only thing Willow was ever good for..." she said, and for just a fraction of a second she could feel herself coming down from the power, and she looked at Buffy with a wistfulness in her eyes. "...The only thing I had going for me, were those moments - just moments - when Xander was my best friend, and I belonged to someone, was part of something good that nobody else could touch. And that will never happen again."

"I know this hurts. Bad," Buffy said, feeling the sting of emotion rise in her again. "But you can't do this."

"Why not?"

"Because you're not the only one hurting here," she told her. "He died saving my life. I loved him, too."

"No, you didn't," Willow told her angrily. "Not like I did. You used him, Buffy, you always did. You came to this town and you got us involved in all of your crap. You got **him** involved. And it got him killed. You never cared about him, you just cared about what he could do for you. He thought he was in love with you, and you just lapped it up, didn't you? You loved the attention he gave you and you knew he'd have done anything for you. He was your back up, wasn't he? When Angel screwed you around or when Riley finally wised up to you being an emotional wreck, you took it out on him. You took him away from me. For years it was him and me against everything else because we were all we had, and then you come along and...it's gone. Everything changed. Because of **you**."

"Will, I never..."

"Oh, please," Willow said coldly. "You're telling me you never meant it? You're sorry? Don't bother."

"And what about Tara?" Buffy asked. "She loves you."

"More fool her."

"Will," Buffy said sadly, "If you let loose with the Magicks now, it will never end."

"Promise?" Willow asked brightly.

"You don't want that."

"Why not?"

"Because you lose everything. Your friends, your self...you let this control you and the world goes away, and all of us with it. There's so much to love for. Willow, there's too much to—"

"Ack! Please!" Willow said at her hesitation. "This is your pitch?" she asked smugly. "You hate it here as much as I do. I'm just more honest about it."

"That's not true..."

"You're trying to sell me on the world?" Willow asked. "The one where you lie to your friends when you're not trying to kill them and you screw a vampire just to feel and insane asylums are the comfy alternative?" she asked with a smirk, the room slowly spinning, the light and background changing, blurring out of focus, the inhabitants of the room apparently not aware of the transformation. "This world? Buffy, it's me!" she told her. "I know you were happier when you were in the ground, hanging with the worms. The only time you were ever at peace in your whole life is when you were dead. Until Willow brought you back..." Willow stopped as they suddenly found they were no longer at Rack's, but at the Magic Box. "...You know, with Magick."

Dawn and Buffy staggered as they took in their new surroundings with confusion.

"Sorry," Willow told them insincerely. "The trip can be kinda rough if you're, you know, not me."

Buffy closed her eyes against the dizziness and the nausea, holding out an arm to stead herself as Dawn tried to hold on to the counter they had appeared next to, instead finding herself collapsing on the floor with disorientation in front of a stunned Anya and Tara.

"Dawn..." Buffy said worriedly, moving to her sister, the force of the transportation too much, making her fall to the ground next to Dawn.

Willow turned to look at them both, glaring at Buffy with distaste. "You love Dawn so much?" she asked.

"You know I do," Buffy told her tearfully, sounding surprised at the question.

"Is that why you've ignored her ever since you came back?" Willow asked venomously. "Is that why you couldn't even bear to spend one night with her? Why you've never bothered to ask how school is? Why you've never even cared that she's still grieving for her mother but won't dare mention it around you in case it upsets **you**? In case it makes you hate life any more than you already do?"

"Willow, stop," Dawn said quietly.

Willow looked back at Buffy. "You wanna protect your sister, Buffy?" she asked. "Keep her safe?"

"Of course," Buffy told her. "That's all I ever wanted."

"Is that why you took away the only person she could stand to be around when you died?"

"What are you...?"

"She didn't want me or Xander or Tara or Giles," Willow told Buffy. "She wanted Spike. But, then, suddenly you're alive again and Chip Boy forgets all about the person he swore to protect and always be there for. Her only real friend, Buff, and you took him away. How does that feel?" She grinned snidely. "But as long as Buffy's okay, right?" she said. "She can go out and screw a dead guy she always claimed she couldn't stand just to hide from her life, her friends, reality. It doesn't matter that he was a mass murderer, or that he's tried to kill everyone you've ever cared about, and what, you're surprised when he tried to force himself on you?"

"How do you know...?"

"I'm not stupid," Willow told her. "I saw the bruises, the ripped robe. You took Dawn there to stay with him while you came after me. Lucky he wasn't there, huh? But before that...you let him touch you with the blood of a thousand victims on his hands while Dawn's dinner got cold sitting in a brown paper bag on top of a tomb stone, and then you come home and hug your sister with his stench still on you."

She shook her head in disgust. "Wanna know why I was gonna turn her back, Buff?" she asked. "So she wouldn't have to deal with you disappointing her time and time again, ignoring her so you can bang a vampire. We should have left you in the ground," she spat at her. "We should have left you rotting in your coffin with the worms and the maggots and the spiders."

"Willow," Tara began, walking around the counter to reach her and stopping short when she saw Willow's face and the intent clearly written there. "Please..."

Willow turned her attention back to Buffy. "I should have left you in the ground," she repeated. "I should never have used Osiris to bring you back. If I hadn't..." she said, the awful pursed lips signalling her anger, "...If I had left you where you were, he wouldn't have refused to bring Xander back to us. To **me**. Someone who would have appreciated it, being back in the world. Someone who wouldn't waste their lives doing things that disgust even themselves."

"Willow," Tara said gently. "Sweetie, you heard what he said. He wouldn't have been able to do anything. It was a natural death..."

"Oh, stop!" Willow sneered at her, looking back at Buffy. "I guess we'll never find out, will we?" she asked, a dangerous look in her eyes.

Willow tore her glare away from the Slayer and the Scoobies, turning to look around the room, her attention resting on Jonathon and Andrew who were huddled and cowering in fear. "Jonathan. Andrew," she said, amusement in her voice. "You boys like Magicks, don't you?" She raised her hands above her head, the room darkening harshly. "Abra cadabra," she said, blasting them both with an energy that was so horrifying it changed the colour of the air around them, the sound like thunder and screaming combined.


	7. Chapter Seven

* * *

A/N: This chapter is a mixture of old scenes from the original s6 episodes, with additional dialogue from myself. There is a fight scene in this from 'Two to Go', but I couldn't be bothered to go through the scene in detail, so it's not written that well. I figured everyone remembered it anyway, but I wanted to add it in there for dramatic effect and because it's vital to the story.

* * *

Facing off against Buffy was something the old Willow would have balked at, laughed at, even. She didn't have it in her, that cute, mousey, fuzzy sweater-wearing girl she had been since the day they'd met. That's who Buffy would always see her as, which is probably why she was having such a problem with this confrontation.

Not this Willow, though. She got off on it. The old Willow wouldn't have admitted it. Hell, she wouldn't have even thought about it, not consciously anyway. But this was years of frustration and tension coming to fruition. All of the times Buffy had pushed them away, made a wrong decision, put them in danger...this was payback. Rational Willow didn't blame her for any of those things. She understood and forgave them, not that she thought there was anything to forgive in the first place.

But this Willow, the one standing in front of the Slayer with black hair and black eyes, couldn't care less about that. Resentment coursed through her body like adrenalin, blaming her for everything that had led her here, to this moment.

That first night at the Bronze when Buffy had told her 'life is short' – what a pile of crap that had been when she'd nearly ended up as vampire food.

The night she'd used the restoration spell on Angel – her first real foray into practicing actual witchcraft. She'd done that for Buffy, not that she appreciated it. After all the bad things that Angelus had done, Willow only wanted to do the spell to make her friend happy. Buffy had, of course, repaid them all by running away and leaving them on a Hellmouth all summer without a Slayer to protect them.

She had allowed Faith to stay in Sunnydale with them, to fight alongside them, trusted her. What did the raven-haired Slayer do? She unwittingly broke Willow's heart – not that she'd have cared that much if she had known – by sleeping with the boy she'd been in love with since kindergarten and then tried to kill him. That had changed little Willow, hardened her heart a little to Xander, and distanced her from him. Even then, when Faith had done all of those things to hurt them, Buffy had wanted to give her another chance. Yeah, look how well that worked out when she came back like a homicidal maniac after months of being in a coma.

Then there was all the pushing away that came with Buffy finding a new toy. Poor Riley. He never even stood a chance. Aside from working for an evil government conspiracy-themed military and being chipped and drugged by a disturbed Psych professor who also happened to be his boss in said military as well as a mother figure, he could never live up to Buffy's expectations. Couldn't live up to the ghost of Angel, even though she made him try. She had been so obsessed with a 'normal life', a 'normal boyfriend', she forgot her 'normal friends'. She lived in the same dorm room as Willow, yet they had never been so distanced since they'd met. She didn't have a clue about Tara, didn't want to know, even though it was one of the times Willow needed her the most.

And Xander? Forget about it. Willow had been drifting away from him since the disaster that had been their last year of high school. Friends, but not close. Best friends in name only.

Buffy had only used him as the go-to guy. Need legwork doing? Go to Xander. Need clothing delivered? Go to Xander. Need someone to blame for not telling your own boyfriend the truth about your previous relationship? Go to Xander. He'll take the crap. Thinking back, she didn't quite know how they had managed to pull everything back together when every time she thought back to those times she felt her fists clenching, ready to hit out at Buffy.

Everything that had followed – Glory, Dawn, Joyce, Buffy's death...they were all things that had contributed to this new and improved Willow. Buffy had no one else to blame but herself. All the spells she had asked Willow to use to keep Dawn safe from Glory, they had grown in intensity, and no one had stopped her. Even after Giles had come back and Tara had left and everyone else saw the direction she was heading in, Buffy was too busy screwing Spike to care about anything else.

She knew it was hard for her after she had come back, but Buffy never understood how hard it was for everyone around her, too. To live with the knowledge that you pulled someone out of heaven, somewhere they were happy, because you thought they were suffering in a hell dimension somewhere. To live with knowing someone you cared about didn't even want to be around you. She had slowly separated the group, put them all on edge, ignored things she didn't want to see, didn't want to think about.

Now she was paying the price.

Everything Willow was thinking was coming from a purely selfish place. She knew that but it didn't matter. Nothing did now.

She needed someone to blame, needed somewhere to vent her anger, and Buffy was the perfect target. After all, she'd protected Jonathon and Andrew. Willow had let loose with the Magicks but she hadn't been able to touch them because of the counter-spell, wherever that had come from. They were afraid of her, she knew that. She liked it. They were part of the reason Xander was gone, and she was ready to eliminate all reasons for that.

There had been an exchange of words, and also an exchange of fists, which Willow wasn't quite expecting but found exhilarating all the same. Buffy had allowed them to escape, Willow's ever-caring girlfriend taking them and Dawn away from the nasty witch with her bag of magic tricks who was wrecking the Magic Box. She wasn't happy about her targets disappearing, but she wasn't worried either. She'd get to them, sooner or later. She'd catch up with them and they would pay for what they did.

But for now, Willow stood in the debris the melee had caused, shattered bits of the display cases around her, feeling the strength she had imbued herself with running through her veins.

Buffy stood between her and the door, ready to block her exit. Willow knew she had to get past her to get her vengeance, and Buffy wasn't ready to let that happen, and both women knew it.

"So," Willow said, looking unworried. "Here we are."

"Are we really gonna do this?" Buffy asked, unmoving from her position, accepting that this was going to happen whether or not she wanted it to.

"Come on! This is a huge deal for me! Six years as a side man, and now I get to be the Slayer."

"A killer isn't a Slayer. Being a Slayer means something you can't conceive of."

"Oh, Buffy. You really need to have every square inch of your ass kicked."

"Then show me what you got," Buffy told her gravely. "And I'll show you what a Slayer really is."

And so it began. Willow threw a punch at Buffy. Buffy blocked it, spinning Willow, nearly breaking her arm. But Willow threw Buffy back, slamming her into a bookshelf.

Willow pointed, the ladder sliding across the length of the wall of its own accord, smashing into Buffy, sending her into the wall. Buffy tried to get to Willow, but objects came flying at Buffy from all directions. Books, a chair, a statue, each one a direct hit to the head, the ribs, the face, everywhere that was gonna bruise and hurt like hell.

Buffy got out of the line of fire and made a flying tackle, grabbing Willow, the two of them hitting the ground hard.

"Get off, super bitch!" Willow yelled at her, a sidekick at Buffy with enough force to send the Slayer through the glass counter, shattering it into a million tiny pieces.

Buffy came right back at Willow, grabbing hold of her after more punches kicks and attacks were launched. "I can help you stop," she told her.

"I thought you were gonna show me what a Slayer was," Willow said, punching Buffy and launching her through the counter-side bookshelf and curtain, revealing a startled Anya on the other side, book in hand and chanting. "Well, hey. That's interesting," she said as she calmly walked over to the two of them, Buffy quickly getting to her feet and standing between them. "Anya's still here..." She shoved Buffy right out of the way with ease, the Slayer's body crashing through the small table near the entrance of the shop. "Chanting her little heart out," she said, facing the terrified but still chanting Anya. "I think I've been beating on the wrong gal."

Anya's eyes were wide with terror as she tried to run, but, lightning-fast, Willow grabbed her, lifting her off the ground, the demon doing her best to keep the incantation going. The fear showed in her eyes, though, and Willow smiled at that as she chanted louder before she gave up completely. "HELP ME!" she screamed at Buffy.

"You know," Willow said, "I gotta say, I'm surprised at you," she told her. "On the list of people trying to block my Magicks, you would've been the last. I thought you'd be on the vengeance train with me, considering how much you claimed to love Xander."

"Willow," Anya began, stammering out her words. "Don't...please..."

"Maybe that's all it was, though," Willow told her. "A claim. Something you just said to keep him away from me."

"I never kept him away from you..." Anya said. "You grew up...grew apart..."

"And that had nothing to do with you, huh?" Willow scoffed. "I knew it would never work out between you guys," she told her. "Know why? You weren't good enough for him. But, hey, he was always attracted to demons. I mean, giant preying mantis, mummy " she laughed to herself, memories overtaking her for an instant before her face set again.

"If you really loved him like you say you did...why are you stopping me? They deserve this. They should never have come near Sunnydale. They should never have come near Xander. And here you are, chanting away for the bastards... I guess I was right all along.

"Oh, well..." she said with a shrug. "You can't block my spells if you can't chant. And you can't chant if you're sleepin'..." Willow said as she hurled the girl aside like a rag doll, Anya crashing through the far wall of the Magic Box, landing amidst a pile of books strewn across the floor, slumping groggily.

Willow turned to Buffy, the Slayer about to rush her, stopping her short. Buffy, I gotta tell you," she said, "I get it now. The Slayer thing really isn't about the violence." She surrounded herself with energies, the power streaming at her from all directions as if she were collecting strength from them. "It's about the power..." she said as her eyes turned a further black.

She lifted her hands and blasted Buffy with the mystical energy, the recipient of the blow flying through the air and crashing into Giles' desk, hitting the ground but unable to get up. "...And there's no one in the world who has the power to stop me now."

The second the words were out of her mouth, Willow was hit by a giant blast of power that sent her flying back across the room, painfully sliding across the floor. As she came to a stop, she wiped her face with her sleeve, surprised to find blood coming from her nose, as she stared ahead at the door of the shop incredulously.

"I'd like to test that theory," Giles told her, standing there and looking pure Ripper.

Buffy, still lying on the floor, managed to sit up, looking at the door with astonishment. "Giles?" she asked.

Anya, on the floor across the room, got to her feet and repeated the sentiment. "Giles? "

Giles didn't respond to either of them, keeping his focus on Willow with a grim expression.

"Uh oh," Willow said, her voice mocking and sarcastic, "Daddy's home. I'm in wicked trouble now." She sat up, wiping at her bloody nose with her hand, still a little surprised to see the bright red liquid, the colour contrasting sharply with the black of her hair and the veins still on her face.

"You have no idea," Giles told her. "You have to stop what you're doing."

"Uhh, sorry. Can't do that," she told him with a false smile as he walked closer to her. "I'm not finished yet."

"Neither am I," Giles said as she tried to get up, somewhat shakily after her blow. "Stay down," he told her as he gestured at her with one hand and she fell back onto the floor, wincing.

Anya looked on in amazement. "How'd you do that? "she asked softly.

"That's borrowed power," Willow said with a small laugh as Giles kept his focus on her. "No way is it gonna be strong enough—"

"I'm here to help you," he told her, interrupting.

Willow rolled her eyes at him. "Thanks, but I can kill a couple geeks all by myself. But, hey, if you'd like to watch...? I mean, that's what you Watchers are good at, right? **Watching?** Butting in on things that don't concern you?"

"**You** concern me, Willow. Stay on this path and you'll wind up dead."

"Willow," Buffy implored. "Listen to him. I don't want to fight you anymore.

"I don't want to fight you either," she told Buffy, looking at Giles. "I wanna fight **him**." She got to her feet again, this time with magic, rising to her feet without apparent effort.

"Stay down," Giles told her again, making his gesture with his hand.

Willow made a gesture of her own and blocked him. "No," she said firmly, causing Buffy to move over and stand beside her beloved Watcher. "Remember that little spat we had before you left?" she asked him, "When you were under the delusion that you were still relevant here?" she said, walking closer. "You called me a rank, arrogant amateur. Well buckle up, Rupert..." she said as a magical light that seemingly came from nowhere began to light up her body, her eyes blackened over, a humming noise rising in pitch and volume. "...'Cause I've turned pro." Her voice was deep, resonant, as the humming continued and she began her spell. "Asmodea," she began, "Bring forth—"

Giles made another gesture, interrupting her. "Vincire!" he said loudly, green magic energy spilling from his hands, forming a band around Willow's torso, pinning her arms to her body.

Willow looked down at her magical binding with shock. "What?" she said. "No! Get off!" she struggled. "Solvo, libero..."

Giles continued holding out his hand toward her, and suddenly Willow threw back her head and closed her eyes, apparently unconscious. Her body floated up into the air and hovered above the ground, the band of magic holding her changing to a more contained blue-grey colour.

"What did you do?" Buffy asked, both her and Anya watching Willow warily.

"Contained her and her powers within a binding field," he told her, watching Willow carefully. "It puts her in a kind of ... stasis for the time—" He turned and looked at Buffy for the first time, pausing as she continued staring at Willow. "You cut your hair."

Buffy looked up at him, her eyes tearing up as she hugged him.

Anya watched them, walking up behind them and fidgeted for a moment. "I'm blonde," she said. When they both looked at her, she continued. "I-I coloured my hair. Again. I'm blonde."

Giles smiled fondly. "Yes, I noticed," he told her, holding out one arm to include her in the hug.

Familiarity over, Giles disengaged himself from the girls and looked at Willow, walking over to her slowly, the girl's head thrown back, still floating in the air, unconscious, with her head hanging back. "I'm very sorry about Tara," he told her gravely and sincerely, standing there looking sad before he began to walk away. When he caught the sneer that she seemed to be giving him from inside the mystical hold, something cold ran through him. He turned back to Buffy and Anya, something unreadable on their faces as they looked at each other, and then at him.

"Giles," Buffy began, tears still in her eyes from before and welling up again now. "It's..."

He looked back at Willow, darkness in her eyes he had never seen before, and he turned back to Buffy. "What happened?" he asked her.

"Giles," Buffy said again, taking a step closer to the man. "It...it wasn't Tara..." she told him, trying with all of her might to keep her resolve from breaking. "There...there was an accident," she said quietly. "But it wasn't Tara."

"It wasn't?" he asked, sadly surprised, a glance back at the incapacitated witch. "Then who...?" he trailed off, realisation filling his features, knowing through experience there was only one person Willow cared enough about to want vengeance this badly. "No..." he said quietly, putting his head down. "God, no...Xander..."

Willow watched him smugly. "This..." she began, obviously struggling to speak, opening her eyes a little and craning her neck. "...Won't hold me...forever..."

* * *

They had ran as soon as they had hit the outside of the Magic Box, not exactly sure if and how long Buffy would be able to keep Willow busy. They weren't even sure where they were going, only that they had to get there fast. Tara was leading, followed by Dawn, then Andrew, with Jonathon bringing up the rear.

Jonathon slowed, out of breath, panting for all that he was worth, resting the point of the sword he had been carrying since it had fallen into his grasp during the fight at the shop on the ground. "I any more..." he said slowly, only just able to get the words out. "Need to...breathe..."

"Well, then, we need to keep moving," Tara told him as she and the others came to a stop worriedly, glancing around them for any sign of the girl who had declared herself their enemy.

"This is bogus!" Andrew said suddenly, his matching sword in hand. "We gotta get out of this town," he said, turning to Jonathon as a sudden epiphany hit him. "Mexico," he said, eyes wide with prospects. "We should go to Mexico."

"You're not going anywhere," Dawn told them.

At Andrew's glare at the younger girl, Tara stepped forward. "We've just gotta find a safe place to hide you two until we get the all-clear from Buffy."

"Yeah," Andrew said cockily. "And what if the Slayer's dead already? We're just supposed to sit around and wait for Sabrina to come and disembowel us?"

"You do what we say you do..." Tara told him.

"I don't think so," Andrew told her, cutting her off and bringing the sword he was holding, pressing it to Tara's neck, under her chin.

"Okay, you need to put that sword down," Tara told him. "This isn't helping things.

"No way," he told her nervously. "I'm not gonna die because of something I didn't even do."

"Leave her alone," Dawn told him angrily, stepping forward.

"You know," Tara said slowly. "I could use magick to get that thing away from you."

"Yeah?" Andrew asked. "So, why don't you?"

"Because that's exactly what we **don't** need at the moment," she said. "To be using more magick."

"Let her go, Andrew," Jonathon said suddenly, bring his sword up to the side of Andrew's neck and holding it there. "You heard me."

Andrew's eyes widened as he felt the point pierce his skin. "You let me go first."

"Uh-oh," Jonathon said. "Her."

"It's your move."

"No. Yours."

"I'm not moving. I'm not gonna budge till...right now," he pulled away quickly, lowering the weapon and holding a hand to his neck. "Ow!"

"Tara's right," Jonathon said sadly. "We're not leaving Sunnydale. When this is over, you and I are going back to jail to do our time."

* * *

Having heard the tragic news, Buffy took Giles into the workout room at the back of the Magic Box.

"I came as soon as I heard," he told her, nervously picking at one of the strung-up practice dummies.

"The Council?" she asked, standing by the pommel horse.

"The Council haven't a clue," he said bitterly. "About much of anything, really. No, there's an...an extremely powerful coven in Devon. They sensed the rise of a dangerous magical force here in Sunnydale. A dark force, fuelled by grief."

"Willow..." Buffy said, almost to herself.

"I'd so hoped it wasn't her," he said sadly, pausing. "I had thought something had happened to Tara, they said something had happened here, there had been a death. With the power I knew Willow was using, and the way I know she felt about Tara, I just assumed...It didn't even enter my head that it could have been Xander. That's when the coven...imbued me with their powers."

"And sent you here to bring Willow down."

Giles looked at her seriously. "Buffy, what's happened here?"

She unwittingly began to pace slowly across the room. "God. I don't even know where to start."

"Well, Willow's clearly been abusing the Magicks."

"She has," Buffy confirmed with a nod. "She was...and I barely even noticed. Giles, everything's just been so..." she sighed deeply. "Xander left Anya at the altar, and Anya's a vengeance demon again... Dawn's a total klepto... Money's been so tight that I've been slinging burgers at the Doublemeat Palace... And I've been sleeping with Spike." As she finished, she put her head down, something like shame on her face as she spoke to him.

"If this all wasn't so tragic, it'd be funny," he told her. "I just can't seem to get my head around why Xander..."

Buffy looked up at him. "He did it to protect me," she told him. "He saved my life."

"Sounds like Xander," Giles remarked, a small smile on his face. "If he's not bringing you back to life, he's saving you."

Buffy smiled back, nodding. "It's what he did." She shook her head, tears coming into her eyes again. "And look how he's repaid..."

"You blame yourself for this?" he asked her.

"Shouldn't I?" she asked back, no hint of self-pity and asking a valid question. "Willow does. I mean, it was my fault he was there, wasn't it? I brought him into this world of bad things."

"You don't think it was his own choice?" Giles asked.

"I shouldn't have let him," she said. "I should have told him to stay away, to not get involved. Back in high school, it seemed like he was the one who was always in trouble, you know? He was the guy getting beat up, beat down by whatever monster of the week was terrorising Sunnydale. But, looking back, I couldn't have gotten through half of what life's thrown at me without him. But I never realised it. Not in high school. Not in college. Not even when mom died. I've been so busy trying to live my life, protect Dawn...I've forgotten what matters the most. My family. Dawn, you, Anya, Tara...Willow and Xander. Even when I came back, Giles, I was horrible to everyone. I didn't see how far Willow had gotten into the Magicks. I didn't see Dawn pocketing everything she touched. I didn't see how scared Xander was about the wedding. It's true what they say about not knowing what you have until it's gone. I miss him so much already, and the one person I know who understands that...she's going crazy and trying to kill people."

"I don't know what to tell you, Buffy," Giles said softly. "I can't tell you that everything's going to be okay, because I don't believe it will be. It can't be. You have lost a very dear friend, Anya has lost the person who, until a few weeks ago, she thought she'd spend the rest of her life with, and I feel like I have lost the closest thing to a son I'll ever have. Willow feels like she has lost a part of herself. I sense it from her even now. She feels everything good she ever was, ever had in her was connected to Xander and because of who he was. We've been there with them through everything. We both know about their childhood, their parents... Helping her to find that balance again is going to be hard."

"But we can do it, right?" Buffy asked.

Giles remained silent as he considered the question, before answering honestly. "I don't know."

* * *

Because she didn't know what else to do, Anya was clearing up the debris in the Magic Box, brushing what she could into the small dustpan she was holding. She stood up from her crouched position, carrying it across the room to the counter, past the still-floating Willow.

"_Anya..._" Willow's voice echoed loudly.

Anya nervously turned to see the witch still floating, unable to move her lips to speak, and she realised Willow was using the telepathy thing she'd gotten so good at the previous summer. "Willow," she said, trying to sound calm and feeling anything but.

"_I need you, Anya,_" Willow told her. "_I need you to do something for me._"

Anya twisted her hands together nervously, gathering her nerves as she took a step closer to the floating witch. "I know what you're trying to do," she told her. "And I hate to burst your bubble, but that mind control mojo doesn't work on Vengeance Demons, so why don't you just—"

"_Stop talking and listen._"

"Okay," Anya said with a nod.

"_You need to free me._"

Anya shook her head. "No," she said uncertainly, turning back towards the training room.

"_You don't want to call out to them,_" Willow told her as Anya came to a stop again beside her. "_I know you don't want to get anyone killed,_" she said calmly, an understanding tone there that she was using intentionally for pure manipulation purposes. "_What I said earlier...I didn't mean it,_" she said. "_I know you loved him._"

Anya took a step back, looking Willow in the eye. "Then why did you say it?" she asked, feeling her eyes well up once again. "I know you only tolerated me because—"

"_That's not true. I was angry,_" Willow told her. "_I know that he loved you, too. But now he's gone, Anya, and it's all their fault._"

"No, it's not," Anya told her. "It was—"

"_Yeah, Warren, I know,_" she said quickly. "_He may have held the gun...he was the one who pulled the trigger...but they were a part of it, too,_" Willow pointed out. "_Everything they've done to us over the past few months. They've killed people, Anya. They've summoned demons to come after us. They made Buffy think we were all just a delusion._"

She watched Anya react, watched her consider everything looking pensive. "_They're the reason Xander was so hurt about you and Spike, you know,_" she told her, using the emotional bribery route. "_The cameras they set up in here? Xander saw everything._" She paused for effect, trying to get the right tone for what she needed. "_I know that what happened between you two that night was about comfort,_" she said sympathetically. "_You were hurting, and I get that, really, I do._"

When she saw the tears falling down Anya's cheeks, she continued. "_But these guys...they helped Warren. They were all there when that girl died. They were all there when they were robbing that security truck. It was just carelessness that got them left behind. If they'd gotten away too like Warren...do you really think it would've just been Warren standing in that back yard? Do you really think Xander would have been the only one to be hurt? _

"_If they escape now, if we let them get away, they'll be back and it'll all start again. They'll come after us, and anyone else who has anything to do with the Slayer. They'll come after you, Anya. Is it really worth all of this? _

"_The only reason you were human for so long was because of Xander and how you felt about him. He was only connection to this world you could even stand and you gave that up when you guys ended. What does that tell you about mortality and this world you're living in? The people you're protecting killed the one person you loved, Anya._"

She smirked to herself. "_You want to take away this binding spell,_" she told her.

Anya looked up at her. "I don't know how."

"_I do. Do you want me to tell you?_"

* * *

"...Duct tape?" Giles asked as Buffy relayed the rest of the events that had taken place since his departure.

"On their mouths," Buffy told him. "So the demon could eat them."

"Because they were figments."

"All of it," Buffy said. "You, Sunnydale... And I was just some nutcase in L.A."

"Of course," he said. "Why didn't we see it before?"

Giles looked at her seriously. "Can you forgive me?" he asked.

"For what?"

"I should never have left."

"No," she told him. "You were right to leave. We're just...stupid."

"I know you're all stupid," he told her with a small smile. "I should never have abandoned you."

"No," she said. "Giles, you were right about everything. It is time I was an adult."

"Sometimes the most adult thing you can do is...ask for help when you need it."

"Now you tell me," she said, smiling. She lowered her head. "I guess...I wasn't ready before. It took a long time for that feeling to go away...the feeling that I wasn't really here. It was like...when I clawed my way out of that grave, I left something behind. Part of me. I just...I don't understand...why I'm back."

"You have a calling."

"But it was my time, Giles. Someone would have taken my place. So why?" Giles looked away thoughtfully, not ready or willing to answer that question. "Right," she said with a sigh. "What's gonna happen to Willow?"

Giles looked at her, straightening his posture like the Watcher she knew and loved. "Well, the coven is working on a...way to extract her powers without...killing her. And, uh, should she survive, you ought to know, Buffy, that there's no guarantee she'll...be as she was. Willow has killed a human being. How will she be able to live with herself?"

"I wouldn't worry about that," Willow told them, standing in the doorway behind an unconscious Anya hovering in mid-air. She moved her arm to the side, Anya with her, revealing eyes that were blacker than ever. She let go of the girl in her grasp, letting her fall to the floor, hard, as she looked them both in the eye. "Willow doesn't live here anymore..."


	8. Chapter Eight

Buffy and Giles exchanged a look of pure alarm as Willow stepped over Anya's unconscious form.

"Don't worry," she told them with a sigh. "She's not dead." She looked down at the girl with a shrug. "It's a shame I had to knock her out. She was really coming around to my way of thinking. Just, you know, not quickly enough, and I really don't have time to hang around."

As Buffy looked to him, Giles stepped forward, already on the offensive, but before he could do anything a bolt of magic shot from her and hit Buffy, sending the Slayer flying back to crash into the wall, falling to the ground painfully.

Giles watched, sadly surprised, starting toward Willow. "Vincire!" he called, holding out his hand and gesturing to her, sending another dose of the binding spell he'd used earlier at her, but this time was ready and waved her hand at it, blocking it.

"Solutum," she said calmly, the binding field disappearing as she walked into the training room proper. She allowed a small smile to creep onto her face. "Fool me once..." she said creepily.

Giles' eyes widened in terror as behind her, on the wall with the knives and other weapons used to assist Buffy in her training, the objects moved from their case, hovering in the air. "Willow..." he began.

She shook her finger at him patronisingly. "Shame on you," she said as the knives began to fly towards Giles at speed.

Giles looked to the left, yelled something, and the practice dummy sat at one side of the room flew in front of him, taking the force of the knives slamming into it at full speed. Now, he was ready when Willow made an angry face and waved her hand, the dummy falling to the side, and a ball of energy appeared in his palm which he quickly threw at the girl. "Excudo!"

She flew backward through the brick wall, falling through the debris to land in the Magic Box proper, slamming into one of the pillars supporting the upper loft on the way amidst the raining bricks, books and plaster demolition caused.

"Neat trick," she said as she got to her feet with no trouble at all, the Magicks suffusing her with strength she'd never known before. "But can you do this?" she asked, letting loose with a vortex of black and purple energy that transfixed him to the spot. "Didn't think so," she told him, watching his eyes dart over to Buffy, still on floor. "Oh, I get it," she said. "You think little Watcher's Pet will come and save you?" she asked, scoffing. She turned to Buffy and unleashed another round of energy on her.

She looked around the partially demolished shop, her eyes falling on the practice dummy and the sharp things still buried in it. She made another gesture with her hand, the items responding in kind by flying free from the dummy and floating in the air. At Giles wide, horror-filled eyes, she shook her head. "Don't worry, these aren't for you," she said, picking one of the knives out of the air and fingering the point until blood was drawn from her tip. "These are for me. I told you before, I don't have time for this. But, hey, once I've finished with the geeks, I'll come back for you, okay?"

With one long look at them, she turned and started toward the exit, the knives obediently following their master. When she was close enough, a bolt of Magick flew from her outstretched fingertips that blew the door clean from its hinges, causing the object to land loudly on the ground a few feet away. She grinned to herself, turning back to the magically paralysed Giles. "I'll just leave this open," she told him.

* * *

It was funny how cemeteries in Sunnydale were never locked, Tara thought to herself as she pushed open the heavy iron gates to the graveyard, ushering in Dawn and the boys. She supposed there wasn't much point, really. They probably just got fed up with repairing the broken locks on a daily basis.

"A graveyard?" Andrew spat out. "You're bringing us to a graveyard? What a great idea!" he said dryly. "Like we want to be reminded where we could end up if the psycho witch catches up with us."

"Hate to agree with the Super Geek," Dawn said quietly, falling into step with the older girl as they walked quickly through the grounds. "But are we sure we wanna be here?" she asked. "I mean, don't we spend enough time hanging out in cemeteries?"

"Well, where do you suggest we go, Dawn?" Tara snapped. "I mean, it may have escaped your notice, but we're kind of lacking hiding places. At least here we have open mausoleums, a lot of space...I wasn't exactly prepared to flee from my girlfriend. We need some time to think about what we're going to do next."

"Sorry," Dawn told her. "I didn't mean...you know."

"I know," Tara said, stopping and smiling at Dawn. "It's just that this is...well, it's hard."

Dawn nodded. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Tara shrugged. "I just keep thinking about how much I know she's hurting right now," she said sadly. "I just want to help her."

"You can," a voice said.

Tara and Dawn turned around quickly, their eyes wide in surprise at the sight of dissipating magical energy, leaving Willow standing in its wake, a trail of weapons behind her in the pitch-black cemetery.

"Uh-oh..." Andrew said quietly, turning to Jonathon in terror.

"Willow..." Tara began.

"Not now, sweetie," Willow drawled, not even looking at her lover as she pointed at them, the magical energy spilling from fingertips and sending Dawn and Tara flying across the graveyard and into a tomb with two loud thuds, both them falling to the ground unconscious.

Jonathon and Andrew looked between each other, both terrified in the knowledge there was no one else to protect them.

"Boys," Willow said brightly, walking towards them, making them back away from her uneasily with small steps, stumbling over the rocks and dirt over the uneven ground. "Alone at last," she told them. "You know, everyone keeps stopping us from catching up, don't they?" she asked, shaking her head.

Andrew held up his sword defiantly, the weapon shaking in his trembling grasp so much that he brought his free hand to hold it more firmly. "You won't hurt us," he told her, his voice shaking. "I have a sword and I'm not afraid to use it!"

Willow waved her hand and the sword fell from his grasp, landing on the floor next to her, Jonathon's with it. "Pathetic much?"

"It wasn't us!" Andrew yelled bluntly. "It was Warren."

"Shut up!" she told him. "Before you find out what it's like to have your mouth sewn shut, just like your little friend who ended up in a million pieces in the forest. You wanna join him?"

"No," Andrew told her emotionally, shaking his head violently. "No, please..." he begged. "We're—"

"Shut up!" she yelled at him again, a gesture of her hands that threw them both back, the knives she had conjured flying at them, pinning each of them to the side of a mausoleum by their clothes, the blades outlining each of the figures.

She slowly walked over to where they splayed against the wall. "These knives aren't as good as what I used on that creep Warren," she told them. "I had him strung up with vines, you know." She shrugged nonchalantly. "Oh, well. I suppose this will just have to do. So, boys," she said. "Who wants to be first?"

"Willow, please," Jonathon said quietly. "Don't do this..."

"Why not?" she asked. "Why shouldn't I do this? You think you deserve to be let off the hook for what you've done?"

"I know that we were involved in this, one way or the other," Jonathon told her. "But we never wanted to hurt anyone."

"Tell that to Katrina," Willow said viciously. "You **hurt** her. You **killed** her. All of you."

"That was an accident," he said.

"And what about everything you've done to try and get to the Slayer?" she asked. "You're telling me that was an accident too?"

Jonathon took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears. "We just..." he started. "We just got carried away," he told her. "I mean, things just seemed to happen so quickly, you know? One minute I don't have any friends, the next I'm in a basement planning to take over Sunnydale with two other guys. If I'd known it was going to get this far..."

"You'd have what?" she snapped coldly. "Seen the error of your ways? I don't think so. It's about the power, Jonathon. You had it, and you wanted more. Side effect: people got hurt. But you don't care about that."

"That's not true!" Jonathon objected. "I liked Xander. He was a good—"

"Stop!" she yelled at him. "You don't get to say his name!" she said viciously. "Don't even talk about him!"

"We've known each other since kindergarten, Willow," Jonathon implored. "I know we were never friends—"

"That's true," she told him. "No one ever wanted to be friends with you, if I recall. Grade school, high school, college...you had to turn evil to get anyone to spend any time with you." Her eyes narrowed. "I'm thinking the words 'high powered rifle' and 'clock tower' are flashing through your brain right about now. That option's looking pretty attractive now, huh, Jonathon? I know it is to me. Buffy should have left you up there. She would have done us all a favour. Hey, maybe I can get hold of another one for you."

"Don't..." Jonathon begged, feeling the tears well up in his eyes.

"Yeah, you're right," she told him. "I mean, that would just seem so quick. To me, anyway. To you it'd probably seem like an eternity. No, I think we need to do this nice and slow..."

"I've never done anything to anyone before all of this." Jonathon said hurriedly.

"You haven't?" she asked, stepping towards him with intent. "Peeing in the pool?" she said. "Making yourself Superstar for a day? Ringing any bells for you?"

"You must know that I wouldn't have purposely hurt him," Jonathon begged.

"I don't know anything anymore," she said quietly, looking away from them for a split-second. "Everything I thought I knew has changed."

"It's not gonna bring him back, you know!" Andrew yelled at her bluntly. "Whatever you do to us...he's still gonna be dead!"

Suddenly, with one sweep of her arm, the twin swords flew up from the ground and hovered in the air menacingly, before shooting forward with Willow's fury towards the boys.

She took pleasure in watching them squirm in abject terror as the swords pressed against their abdomens threateningly, the points piercing clothing and nipping the skin there.

"Please..." Andrew begged.

"What, make it quicker?" she asked, almost innocently. "Okay."

And suddenly, a sword was embedded in each of their torso's, the pair of them letting out screams and gasps as the weapons penetrated their bodies violently.

She liked that they were still conscious. She liked that the pain they were feeling was evident in their eyes. She liked the trickle of blood that was dripping from each of their wounds. Their faces were masks of emotions, sweat was beading upon their skin from what felt like ripping in their stomachs. Paleness was beginning to overtake their complexions as they struggled to stay awake, not that she'd have let them pass out. There would have been no fun in them not being able to feel what she was putting them through. Every single motion they attempted to make made more pain course through their bodies.

This was only the beginning of what she had planned.

"See?" she said brightly. "You're not dead. I paid a lot of attention in biology. The swords haven't punctured any organs. They're just kinda holding you in place, like a pig roasting on a spit, only vertically. But, hey, what do I know about pigs? I'm Jewish. It's probably done a fair bit of damage, though, I would imagine. How does it feel to be impaled?" she asked thoughtfully. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes..." Jonathon breathed. "Yes...it hurts... Is that what you want to hear?"

"Have you just tuned in?" she said dryly. "Of course that's what I want to hear. I want to hear you both screaming in agony. Begging for me to stop. Begging for me to end it, the pain and the suffering."

Andrew struggled to free an arm from the knives that held his sweater in place firmly against the concrete, whispering in shallow breaths, trying to remember an incantation, anything to get him away from her.

"Nuh-uh..." she told them in a sing-song voice. "There will be no escaping, thank you very much. We're just going to have ourselves a nice little party, just the three of us. Won't that be fun?"

"You don't wanna do this..." Andrew mumbled out, the pain quickly working its way through his body.

"Funny," she scoffed. "That's exactly what your dead little buddy said when the bullet was tearing through his skin."

"You're...you're not this person..." Jonathon said slowly. "You do this...you kill us...there's no going back..."

"Shush!" she told them, twisting her hand at the swords, making them turn in the boys bodies, making them scream out in pain as more blood dripped from the wounds. She watched the swords, fascinated by them as they twirled around, the sound of the points grinding into the granite of the mausoleum.

She reached out to touch one of them, her finger lightly grazing the polished finish of the weapon. "Xander bought these from a thrift store when he went to L.A. one time to see his aunt and uncle," she said slowly, smiling to herself at the memory. "He called me from his hotel room, so excited, like he was the day he got a G.I. Joe action figure from his parents when he was seven. When he brought them back they looked pretty crappy. I mean, they were blunt and were tarnished and didn't look like anything, but he worked on them, you know. He wouldn't give up until he could see himself in them, and the blades could cut into tin. He gave them to Giles on the day he opened the Magic Box, like a proud son trying to please his father. Giles was all British and stuttery and cleaned his glasses ten times over, which I suppose means he was proud, and asked Xander to put them up on the wall." She looked back up at them with coldness in her eyes. "Shame he's not here to see how good a job he did on them, huh?"

"Stop..." Andrew cried, not caring now. "Just let us go..."

"Can't do that," she told them. "See, these swords here? They're impaling you. They're holding you against the wall. They're also holding your guts in place, too. These swords are removed? The blood loss will be so bad you'll go into shock in seconds, then you'll probably have a heart attack. So, really, I'm doing you a favour here."

"It's not...too late..." Jonathon told her, rapidly losing the feeling in his limbs where the knives were still holding him in place, losing consciousness from the terrible pain. "You don't...have to do...this..."

"Oh, but that's where you're wrong," she warned him. "Cause I kinda think I do." She put her hands out in front of her, and gestured with her forefingers, pulling one of the knives away from each of the figures with an unseen force. She grinned at them both, continuing to pull away the things that were holding them in place on the wall, randomly plucking the knives to let them hover around in the air.

"Stop!" Andrew yelled. "Please!"

Willow paid no attention to him, just made a flicking gesture with one of her hands that caused one of the knives to swipe at his cheek, making a long, deep gash there. "Now," she said calmly. "These knives were pinning you in place. When I remove them, these swords, if there's enough weight on them, they'll start to split you both right open. Slowly, though, at first. Then, as the pressure builds on them, they'll just start to glide through your insides like butter." She widened her eyes in delight. "Exciting, huh?"

She continued to randomly pull the knives free from their encasing slowly, taking her time, no hint of remorse or sympathy for her victims. She plucked one of the knives out of the air and studied it carefully. Then, as if an idea came into her head, she held it in front of her. She took the blade between her fingers, drew her arm back and threw. The point of the blade hit the stone wall and bounced off, eliciting a sigh of disappointment from the witch.

"When we were in second grade, I wanted to be a magicians assistant," she informed them. "There was a field trip to the zoo," she looked at Jonathon. "Do you remember that?" she asked. At his weary nod, she continued. "Of course you do, you threw up so much on the bus back home that Miss Evans had to take you to the emergency room," she grinned to herself. "But that day...everything was just so...amazing. It was exciting and new...we didn't know anything like that could ever exist in real life. When we got home, Xander and I talked for hours about the magician there. Xander said that was what he was gonna be when he grew up, and that I was gonna be his assistant, and I believed him, because he told me that whatever we were gonna be, we'd do it together. We'd always be at each others side.

"He said that we needed to practice so we could be the best the world had ever seen. Xander borrowed his grandfathers clothes, and I'd pretend to be the beautiful, glamorous girl by his side in my mom's high heels and red lipstick, and we'd play knife-throwing." She laughed in spite of herself. "It's lucky I still have an eye, you know. Good thing he was such a terrible shot back then, and my mom certainly didn't seem to think it was funny to find her best carving knife stuck an inch into the garage wall. I suppose, looking back...it's kind of ironic that I ended up being the one working the mojo." She looked at peace for a brief, fleeting moment, as she watched another knife float in the air in front of her.

"So, fellas," she said cheerfully, snapping back from whatever world she had been inhibiting. "How am I doing at the whole torture thing? I'm kinda new to the area, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. I know there are the basic methods, Faith mentioned it once, but I think as long as it hurts and you're still conscious enough to feel everything, it's a plus, what do you think?"

"Don't..." Jonathon pleaded, his eyes rolling in their sockets, coughing as something filled his mouth. "...Stop, please..."

"What was that?" she asked. "I didn't quite catch it with the blood that's starting to trickle out of your mouth. Did you say 'don't stop'? Cause, I gotta tell you, I'm really not planning to."

"Willow..."

"No!" she told them, mouthing a short incantation in Latin.

Jonathon opened his mouth, ready to beg and plead and do whatever he had could to get himself out of this situation, but when he spoke, nothing came out. He swore he was speaking, he could almost hear the words he was saying in his head, but there was no sound. He shot a panicked look at Andrew, who was fading by the minute, not that the other guy had ever had ever had a high threshold for pain, before his eyes flickered to Willow.

"See?" she told him. "I can do cute tricks, too." She frowned. "I thought it'd be fun to hear you screaming and begging...turns out it's just annoying."

She didn't see the energy that began to form behind her. A shimmering white, translucent glowing ball of magic that grew without a sound. Now, she was busy waving her arms around in the air in front of her, the motions causing the flying knife act she was working on to zigzag through the air, some of them hitting the boys, cutting them in different places, causing more blood to fall from their forms onto the supposed holy ground of the cemetery.

The first she knew of it was when they boys eyes widened, and not just from fear and pain and pleading. She almost thought it was a trick, something to distract her attention while they tried to escape, but then she figured that they couldn't get out of this if they tried. They were rapidly losing strength, she could feel it falling away from them and filling the air, so she knew she could risk a look at what they were finding so interesting.

There, behind her, growing in size, was a swirling white vortex in the middle of the pitch-black cemetery, almost like something heavenly. She moved her focus from the guys and turned fully to the portal, holding out her palms and blasting it with a burst of her Magick.

Instead of disappearing, the thing seemed to grow and become fierce, like a wild animal waiting to devour her. "Oh, crap..." she said to herself as she suddenly felt the full force of the thing pulling her towards it, more annoyed than worried at the interruption. She looked back at Jonathon and Andrew one last time, grinned at the state she had left them in, bleeding and defeated and humiliated. "See you guys in Hell..." she said as the vortex pulled her into its centre.

* * *

As she fell out of the other side of the portal a few seconds later, Willow found herself where she expected to be. The Magic Box again. She was kind of surprised when she saw the state of the place. Yeah, she'd done the damage, but she didn't remember it being like this. Not that she cared, she was just interested.

The pillar that he'd thrown her into earlier lay on the floor with various items of furniture and stock, sparks of electricity flying from exposed wiring, a small fire from a pile of books billowing black smoke and concentrating the air with its stench.

Giles stood before her, looking less than healthy having spent a lot of his magical energy to bring her back, slumping in the doorway to the training room, his face pale and tired.

"You again..." she muttered to herself. "I was just about to go for the big finish."

Giles' eyes widened at the statement, something like relief there as he realised she hadn't killed anyone else.

"It's okay, though," she told him with a small smile. "I did enough damage to last for a little while longer. Then they'll probably just bleed to death or have a heart attack from the shock. Not quite how I'd envisioned it, but, hey, it'll do. They won't even last till morning." She walked forward, stepping around the debris carefully. "That all you got, Jeeves?" she asked, mocking him. "'Cause, I could stand to go another ten rounds. Whereas...you can barely stand."

"Your powers...may be undeniably greater," he told her wearily. "But I can still hurt you if I have to."

"Boy, you just don't get it, do you?" she asked. "Nothing can hurt me now," she told him. For the first time, she realised that sometime during all the fighting she had been injured. Not seriously, just a cut on her face that stung a little with the dust and smoke floating around the room. She lifted her hand to it, "This?" she told him, waving a hand in front of it, the cut healing as if it were never there. "...Is nothing. It's all...nothing." She said, almost sadly.

"I see," he told her. "If you lose someone you love...the other people in your life who care about you...become meaningless. I wonder what Xander would say about that."

Willow's eyes flickered to Buffy, who had moved from wherever she had been to stand at Giles' side. "You can ask him yourself," she said grimly.

Willow lifted her hand and sent a bolt of magic toward Giles, but Buffy rushed forward, pushing Giles forward and out from under the loft. Just in time, it seemed, as the latest magical blast destroyed what was left of the loft's structure, and the whole thing came tumbling down.

Willow looked annoyed as Buffy and Giles fell to the floor. "You're always saving everyone," she told Buffy. "It's kinda pesky." She looked down at the fire that had been made beside her, an idea forming in her twisted mind. She bent down, a ball of flames in her palm that didn't even touch her. She grinned when she saw Buffy's worried face watching her every move. "You probably even think you're buying escape time for Jonathan and the other one. Well, I got a little secret for ya. They're as good as dead already after what I did to them. But if I want to finish the job, I can kill them from anywhere I want. With this." She waved her hand over the ball, the flames growing. "It'll find them. It'll bury them. Along with anyone helping those Dead Men Walking."

Buffy got to her feet, obviously in pain, staring at the fireball. "Don't..." she said.

"Unless..." Willow said mockingly, "Somebody, somehow...can get there in time to save them." She paused, shrugging. "Huh. Oh, well." With one gesture, she threw the fireball into the air, watching proudly as it burst through the ceiling, leaving a gaping hole in its wake. "Fly, my pretty, fly," she said as the flames disappeared from sight. She grinned at Buffy. "See what I did there? "she asked.

Giles looked up at Buffy, seeing she was obviously torn. "Go," he told her without hesitation.

"Good luck!" Willow called as Buffy ran past her and after the fireball, before she turned her attention back to Giles. "I thought she'd never leave," she told him, stepping towards him. "Now I finally have you all to myself."

* * *

"Ow..." Tara said as she opened her eyes, finally stirring from Willow's magical hit. She felt around on the ground where she had landed with her hands, finding the side of a crypt next to her. She ran one hand up the surface slowly, finally using it to press against as she sat up, closing her eyes again against the pain that was shooting through her head. She put her free hand to the back of her head, feeling the lump that was forming there from where she had connected with the concrete wall.

There was a sound that caught her off guard. The sound of someone moving on the ground, not too far away from her, and she quickly tried to shake off the remnants of the concussion she was almost sure she had. It all came back to her in a rush as she opened her eyes. "Dawn..." she said quietly, opening her eyes, despite the pain that action brought, and quickly looked around.

Sure enough, the younger Summers girl was lying on the floor a few yards away from her, having suffered the same fate as Tara, and she shuffled across the ground to get to her. "Dawn?" Tara asked, sitting beside the girl and touching her cheek softly. "Dawnie?"

She let out a breath of relief when Dawn responded, groaning as she moved her arms and legs in short, twitching movements. "Don't try and open your eyes yet," Tara told her. "Just relax. Are you okay?"

"I think so," Dawn mumbled. "Apart from the searing pain all through my body. Tara?" Dawn asked, still sounding drowsy. "What happened?"

"Willow..." Tara said quietly, half hoping the other girl wouldn't hear.

"So that was real?" Dawn asked, lifting her hands to her face to brush away the hair that had fallen across her face. "I thought that had been a dream," she said as she opened her eyes a little, struggling to focus on the figure sat beside her and blinking when the silver light of the stars above hit her eyes.

"I wish..." Tara muttered.

"Are **you** okay?" Dawn asked as she fumbled around on the ground with her hands, using her palms as leverage to sit up, Tara grabbing her arms to help.

"Yeah," Tara answered, trying not to sound as terrified as she felt, trying to keep it together for Dawn's sake. "We should probably find Jonathon and Andrew, though..."

"Tara..."

"...I think they must have ran when Willow appeared. So, if we can just look around..."

"Tara..."

"...We can get a better idea of where we'll be safer. I think—"

"Tara!" Dawn yelled.

"What?" the witch asked, looking at her wide, frightened eyes. "What's wrong?" When Dawn didn't respond, just kept her eyes fixed on something behind Tara, she eventually followed her gaze. "Oh, no..." she said quietly, her voice breaking with tears as she saw the two silent figures held up on the mausoleum. "Oh, Goddess..."

* * *

"You're such a hypocrite," Willow said, pacing the floor of the ruined Magic Box. "Waltzing in here with your borrowed Magicks. So you can tell me what? Magic's bad? Behave? Be a good girl?" she chuckled to herself. "Well, I don't think you're in any position to be telling me what to do," she let her eyes flick to the part of ceiling that was still in tact, but only just, smirking at Giles, who was pinned against it, groaning in obvious pain from the cuts and bruises and probable internal bleeding. "Do you?"

Willow gestured with one figure without so much as a thought, the motion sending Giles falling to the floor. He landed hard, on his stomach, his face pained but holding it together, if only for now. "I used to think you had all the answers," she told him scornfully. "That I had so much to learn from you..."

"Willow..." Giles began.

Willow gestured again, Giles flying back up to his position on the ceiling, groaning in pain as he hit the surface. "You were jealous," she told him, looking up to make sure he was feeling everything. "Still are. Just couldn't bear that I was the one with power. That's why you ran away."

She shook her head to herself. "You didn't care about him at all, did you?" she asked.

"Willow, that's...that's not true..." he told her. "You know...it's not..."

"You didn't," she told him. "You didn't care about either of us..."

"Willow..."

"We thought you were everything," she said. "Those first few years, I had such a crush on you, you know. You were the first person in my life who encouraged me to gain more knowledge, to never give up learning, and I used to envy Buffy so much for that connection she had with you. And Xander... He'd never have admitted it to you, but he loved you like a father. When he needed advice, he'd come to you, and he'd know you'd always be honest with him. We thought you'd do anything to protect us, because we felt that way about you.

"I used to look up to you so much," she told him, a surreal smile spreading across her face. "I guess I still do – only, literally now."

"Incurso!" Giles said, a bolt of green magic flying from his mouth to hit Willow.

"That's why you—" she tried to continue, but only stumbled back from the blow as Giles fell back to the floor. She felt the air rush out of her lungs as she tried to keep her balance. "That...was rude!" she panted. "Now I forgot what I was saying."

"Perhaps you're not as strong...as you think you are," Giles said painfully, Willow watching as he struggled to get up. "You're expending way too much of your mystical energy to maintain your powers. At this rate you're going to...burn out. And up."

"Blah, blah, blah," Willow said, rolling her eyes in boredom, obviously annoyed.

"Willow," he said emotionally, only managing to make it to his knees in his efforts to stand. "You...you need to stop..."

"What I need..." she said intently, moving forward with an impossible speed, standing next to Giles in an instant, "...is a little pick-me-up." She grabbed his frail body violently, placing her hands on his chest, where it began to glow with an orange-red energy. She ignored his gasps of pain as she drained him of his power, her eyes set in determination.

Suddenly, she freed him, staggering back as he fell backwards onto the floor. "Whoa," she said, a laugh in her voice. "Head rush." She stumbled back against the counter, sliding down the surface to rest on the floor there, her images blurring confusingly. "Wow," she said, gasping in pleasure. "Whoa. Who's your supplier? This is...wow..."

She looked over at the barely-conscious Giles. "It's incredible," she panted. "I mean, I am so juiced... Giles, it's like...no...mortal person has...ever had...this much power. Ever. It's like I, I'm connected to everything... I can feel it... It feels like...I...I can feel..." The smile she had been wearing from the rush slowly faded as she paused. "...Everyone." Her face fell in sadness and pain. "Oh. Oh, my God. All the emotion. All the pain. No," she said emotionally. "It, it's too much. It's just too much."

"Willow..." Giles said weakly, struggling to reach her. "It doesn't have to be...like that. You...you can stop it."

She was bent over now, her hands splayed on the floor as if in physical pain with everything she was experiencing. "Yeah," she said, panting. "I, I can. I have to stop this," she told him as she got to her feet. "I'll make it go away."

"Willow..." Giles tried, but it was no use.

"Oh, you poor bastards!" Willow said, her face contorting in pain as magic began to swirl around her, lifting her into the air, lightening flashing around her body. "Your suffering has to end."

"No..." Giles said as a cloud of magic surrounded her like a tornado and she disappeared.


	9. Chapter Nine

"Oh, god!" Dawn exclaimed as she and Tara neared the two seemingly unconscious figures and the mausoleum. "Are they...?" she trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.

Tara tentatively took a step forward, taking Andrew's hand carefully, feeling around on his wrist for any sign of life. When Andrew's eyes opened and his head turned to look at her, she jumped back, startled. "No..." she said to Dawn. "They're not..." she told her, conscious of not adding the 'yet' to the end of the sentence, even though she knew it wouldn't be long for them.

She looked back at Andrew, seeing his mouth opening as if he were mouthing words, trying to tell her something. It didn't take more than a few seconds to work out that Willow had cast a spell on them. She closed her eyes thoughtfully for a second, said a short, quiet incantation, and suddenly she could hear the gasps coming from both of the boys.

"...Tried telling you this was a bad idea...but you wouldn't listen... Help us..." Andrew begged, crying, not sobbing because that would have taken too much energy, and he didn't have much left. "Please...help us..."

At the sounds of his friend's voice, Jonathon stirred, looking at Dawn sadly. "She got us..." he said, almost with a trace of a smile on his face. "I guess...she won, huh?"

Dawn moved forward, ready to help as she reached out a hand to pull the sword from his body.

Tara quickly intercepted, pulling Dawn's hands away. "No," she told her. "We can't move them."

"Why not?" Dawn asked.

"We remove the swords, they'll die instantly," Tara said quietly and gravely. "The trauma is too much for their bodies to handle.

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Dawn asked in a hushed voice. "I mean, we can't just leave them here."

"We're not going to," Tara said. "But I'm just thinking that if Willow did this, she was probably interrupted if she didn't finish the job. We have to be careful."

"Um..." Dawn said, suddenly distracted by something. "I hate to make things worse..."

"What do you mean 'worse'?" Tara asked.

"Well, I'm not exactly an expert," Dawn said, "But I'm thinking a fireball in the sky can't be a good thing..."

Tara turned to see the ball of orange, red and yellow coming towards them, flying through the air.

"Get out of there!" they heard Buffy yell from a distance, seeing her running towards them, desperately trying to keep pace with the fiery object, leaping over the headstones, occasionally glancing up. "Move!"

Buffy leapt forward, pushing Dawn and Tara out of the way of the mausoleum as the fireball hit it, part of the sturdy building collapsing from the impact, Jonathon and Andrew falling free from their bindings, all five of them flat-out on the ground.

Dawn immediately pushed herself onto all fours, crawling to her sister a few feet away as the earth suddenly began to shake and move beneath her, making her stagger on the spot.

"Dawn!" Buffy yelled, worried. "Dawn, hold on!" she told her, trying to get to her feet to get to her, when suddenly a huge hole opened up in the ground, right beneath her sister. She reached out as Dawn screamed, falling into the gaping hope, but only found herself following.

Buffy landed on a dirt floor, twenty or thirty feet below the surface, dirt raining on them from above. She looked up to where they had just come from, just in time to see one of the swords that had been skewered through the boys earlier falling at her. She rolled out of the way just in time, feeling the breeze on her skin as it fell through the air. The sword landed, point down, where her face had been an instant ago. She got to her feet as the second sword fell down, brushing herself off and taking in their surroundings.

It looked like they had happened upon some sort of cave or cavern, dark and dank and smelling of damp, the walls made up of the dirt and rocks one would usually find digging up ground. The thing that unnerved them both was the sections of coffins that protruded from the walls in various places. They both looked up to the hole that had been made, knowing they weren't going to climb out of this easily.

* * *

Above them, it was silent. The fireball had demolished part of a building, the remains of which were scattered across the cemetery, but it had also freed Jonathon and Andrew from their makeshift shackles.

They lay there side by side, the cuts and bruises they both appeared to have on their faces paling in comparison to the burns the fireball had caused, and the wounds in each of their torso's that you could almost see right through.

Jonathon moaned quietly, finding he had no strength to make any louder noise, reaching out with a numb arm to touch the blood that was oozing from his stomach. He managed to touch the sticky liquid there and bring his hand up to his face to look at it. The deep red looked almost black in the night, and he wondered if it really was that colour seeing as how he'd done things so terrible that it hurt to think about them.

He had landed awkwardly, not that he could be in any more pain than he already was, but the back of his legs were flat against the disrupted earth, while his back was twisted so that he was turned toward the demolished mausoleum. It took a lot of effort, but he mustered enough strength to turn himself onto his back, now seeing that Andrew had landed on his stomach, his head turned toward Jonathon, his eyes fluttering open and closed.

Jonathon opened his mouth to speak, but nothing would come out except a rasping noise that sounded like he was choking. He coughed up the blood that was filling his airways, turning his head towards the other boy. "Andrew...?" he said quietly. "Andrew...?"

With some effort, his eyes opened and looked ahead at Jonathon. Somehow, there was an unspoken understanding between them now. Everything they had done...this was their payment for it. Whether or not it was fair, they weren't sure, but people had died because of them. Innocent people. Now it was their turn.

There was the smallest smile on Andrew's face that Jonathon had to admire. He had been the one who was so convinced that they had to pay for their actions, and now they were. He had always thought of Andrew as a bit of a whiner. If he had ever been asked to imagine what Andrew would be like on his death bed, he would have imagined lots of crying and sobbing and screaming that it wasn't fair.

He couldn't feel anything now, which was a very bad sign, he knew. While he could feel everything that had been done to him, he knew he was alive. Now it was all just...gone. It wouldn't be long now.

He smiled back at his friend. "So," he managed to get out. "Mexico, huh?"

There was no reply from Andrew, just the closing of his eyes for the final time.

Jonathon turned his head, laying it flat against the ground silently, looking up at the stars one last time before his chest rose and fell for the final time.

* * *

Having finally awoken from the whammy that Willow had put on her after she had freed her from the binding spell Giles had used, Anya was now surveying the damage done to her livelihood. She hadn't gotten very far, just reaching the doorway from the training room into the Magic Box proper, but as she did, as if the vibration of someone walking through it was too much, the door fell from it's hinges, startling Anya and making her gasp and jump.

She walked slowly into the main room, looking around at the destruction, when she saw something on the floor, recognising it right away. "Giles," she said, rushing over to him. She knelt next to his beaten and weary body, his eyes closed, unmoving, and shook him lightly. "Giles! "she repeated, panicking now.

His eyes opened slowly, staring at the ceiling, the girl looking relieved. "Anya..." he said slowly.

"I'm so sorry," she told him, sincerely upset. "Willow forced me to free her with her brain. Are you okay?"

"I can see..." he told her.

"Oh," Anya said, uncertain. "It's a ...miracle?"

"Willow..." he clarified. "I can see her. She took the magick I had and...now...I know where she is. I can feel what..." His face crumpled slightly, unreadable. "Oh, God..."

"Giles..." she told him. "...You have to rest."

"Silly girl, I'm dying," he told her matter-of-factly.

"No, you're not," she said, alarmed.

"It was... It was the only way. I thought we... There'd be a chance...now...I know where Willow is. She's going to finish it..."

"Finish what?"

"The world. "

* * *

As the sun began to rise through the few clouds in the Sunnydale sky, tiny rays filtered into the hole that had been made in the cemetery. Not far below that hole, a pair of hands clutched at the tree roots that had been exposed around the edges.

Buffy was standing on a coffin, pulling herself up with all that she was worth, attempting to climb the walls of the hole that she and Dawn were trapped in. But, inevitably, the roots gave way in her hand, and she fell backwards, landing on the coffin with a pained yell.

"Buffy!" Dawn called.

The Slayer quickly scrambled off the coffin, standing on the bottom of the hole and brushing herself off, staring up at the only way out.

"Are you okay?" Dawn asked her.

"We have to get out of here," she told her sister determinedly. "Tara!" she yelled loudly.

"I think I saw her hit her head," Dawn said. "Again."

"Tara!" Buffy yelled again.

With no response, both girls looked up to see the sunny blue sky and the tops of the palm trees that were so common in California. Resolved to doing something, anything to keep herself busy, Buffy went over to one of the walls to tug on a wooden coffin there that was protruding awkwardly from it.

"This looks a little like Spike's place," Dawn said, looking around. "You know, under his crypt." When Buffy ignored her, still pulling on the coffin, Dawn looked a little confused. "What are you doing?"

"If we can pull these out, we can use the coffins for height. Maybe get out of here!" Buffy paused for a second, looking around, and picking up one of the swords that had fallen earlier. She took a second to look at the blood that was still staining the blade, chills starting up her back at the thought of where it had come from, before she resolved that this wasn't a time for sentimentality. She shoved it between the wood and dirt, using it to try and pry the coffin loose.

"Maybe one of the tunnels Spike uses is around here," Dawn suggested. "Uh, we could use it to get to his place."

"That's the last place on Earth we need to be."

"Oh, but it was good enough for you to take me there after what he did to you?" Dawn asked, annoyed now.

Buffy finally turned and looked at her sister. What he...?"

"Tried to do," Dawn corrected. "Whatever."

"Dawn..." Buffy began.

"So, it was true?" Dawn yelled at Buffy. "What Willow said at the Magic Box?"

"Dawn, you may not have noticed, we're in really big trouble here. This isn't—"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you didn't need to know."

"Yes, I do. I need to know! I'm not a kid anymore."

"Dawn, I'm trying to protect you," Buffy said angrily.

"Well, you can't!" Dawn yelled back. "Look around, Buffy. We're trapped in here! Willow's killing and people I love keep dying! And you cannot protect me from that."

Buffy looked down at the floor sadly as she realised that Dawn was right, as much as she wished she wasn't. "Dawn..." she whispered.

"Hello?" a voice called down.

Buffy and Dawn looked up, trying to see where it was coming from. "Tara?" Buffy called.

"Buffy?" Tara called, kneeling at the edge of the pit, looking down. "Are you okay? Where's Dawn?"

"Here," Dawn called up, relieved to see that Tara was okay.

"Are Jonathan and Andrew up there with you?" Buffy called up.

"Yeah..." Tara said slowly. "They...I think the fall was too much for them. They're..."

"Dead..." Buffy said softly.

Tara nodded to herself, even though there was no one else to see it, as she leaned forward, trying to see how to get them out. Suddenly, the edge of the pit gave way beneath her. Earth and dirt and grass and rocks fell into the hole as Tara barely managed to pull herself back from the edge.

"Tara?" Buffy called up. "You've gotta find some kind of rope or something and get us out of here."

"Right," Tara said uncertainly, glancing at her surroundings. "Okay, I'll, uh, I'll take a look around."

"And hurry up before—"

She stopped suddenly at the familiar shimmer of magical energy that appeared in front of them, even though part of her wondered if this was Willow, coming back to finish all of them.

"Holy frijole!" Anya exclaimed, looking around in surprise at the pit.

"Anya!" Buffy said. "What are you doing here? Where's Giles?"

"Giles?" Dawn asked Buffy.

"He's still at the magic shop," Anya told them.

"Giles is back?" Dawn asked, turning to Buffy, who in turn rolled her eyes. "You didn't tell me that."

Buffy ignored her sister, instead fixing Anya with a stare. "Did he stop Willow?"

"No," Anya told them. "And things just got a whole lot worse."

"How worse?"

"End of the world worse. Willow's going to destroy it."

"She can do that?" Dawn asked, amazed.

"She can and she will when she gets to where she's going."

"Where's she going?"

"Big old satanic temple," Anya said uncertainly. "Kingman's Bluff?"

"There's...no temple on Kingman's Bluff," Buffy said with a frown.

* * *

This place had once been a source of comfort to Willow. But now, Kingman's Bluff was only going to help her end everything. She'd spent so much time here with Xander when they were growing up.

They'd play hide and seek behind the trees that grew wild at the edges of the clearing here. They'd sit and watch the town below, sometimes in silence when Xander was having a hard time with his dad, or when Willow was being ignored by her mom, but always hand in hand.

They'd play superheroes, but Xander would always be the hero with his home-made cape and a pair of his mom's pantyhose, and he'd joke that he'd never be the saviour in real life, so pretending was the next best thing. She'd told him then that she'd always be his damsel in distress, whether he knew it or not, but he hadn't really gotten the sentiment of it when they were ten years old.

Even after everything that happened when they met Buffy, when the life saving became literal and not metaphorical, it was Xander she held above everyone else. She still felt that way, figured she always would, and that was why this had to happen.

When they'd spent days here, even in their wildest games, they would never have imagined that something so absolutely amazing as this had been under their feet the whole time.

She stood with her hands outstretched at the dry land, the earth rumbling slightly as a huge steeple pushed its way out of the earth like something being born, pointing at an angle, but that didn't matter. The sun shone on the five-pointed pentacle that sat atop the new structure, a trident topping that, with various stone carvings on the actual temple. A carved, stone woman was fixing her with its cement, stone eyes and snake-hair, a snake wrapped around her body, and her mouth wide open, a snakelike tongue coming from her open maw like she was ready to devour everything and everyone, which was incredibly apt in this case.

She watched with blackened eyes as the steeple and the temple continued to rise from its confines, controlled by her magick, ready to welcome the end of the world.

* * *

"Proserpexa? "Buffy asked Anya, clearly confused. "Who's she?"

"Uh, way up there in the hierarchy of she-demons," Anya informed her. "Her followers intended to use her effigy to destroy the world. They all died when the temple got swallowed up in the big earthquake of '32."

"So now seventy years later, Willow's going to make their dreams come true?" Buffy asked.

"She's going to drain the planet's life force, and funnel its energy through Proserpexa's effigy and, and burn the Earth to a cinder."

When Buffy saw Dawn's alarmed, scared face, she resolved to do something, anything to stop her from doing any more damage. "Not if I can help it."

"You can't," Anya informed her, as they looked at her in surprise. "Something else Giles said. No magic or supernatural force can stop her."

"What does that mean?"

"Don't know. He, he said, 'the Slayer can't stop her,' and then he said a bunch of other stuff," she told them anxiously. "He really wasn't too clear."

Seeing something in Anya's movements, the tone of her voice, Buffy stepped forward suspiciously. "Anya, what are you—"

"I...I should get back to him," she said nervously. "He's alone."

"Is he okay? "Buffy asked, suddenly worried.

Anya fidgeted, taking her time with the words she knew they didn't want to hear, the both of them staring at her, waiting for an answer. "Don't think he...has a lot of time left," she said quietly, and Dawn gasped loudly. "I'm sorry."

She disappeared as quickly as she had appeared to them, leaving the Slayer and her sister sombre and even more worried.

After a moment, Buffy's instincts kicked in, refusing to let her give up. "Tara!" she yelled, not seeing the other at the edge of the hole as she had before. "Where is that rope?"

"Buffy..." Dawn said quietly.

"Tara!" Buffy called again, shaking her head. "Where is she?" she asked herself.

"You heard what Anya said..." Dawn told her, clearly upset with tears in her eyes and a look that Buffy was sadly used to seeing these days. "You heard what Giles said."

"I heard," she confirmed. "And I don't care, I have to try..." she said as she tried to move one of the coffins.

"_From the pit of forgotten shadows..." Willow began, the woman that had transfixed her before now at ground level, life size and facing her._

"I'm not just gonna sit here while Willow incinerates what I'm chosen to protect," Buffy declared.

"_Awaken, sister of the dark, awaken—" Willow looked to her side, listening._

"I have to stop her," Buffy said determinedly.

"_Always the Slayer..."_ Willow's voice sounded in Buffy's head, making her pause and straighten up in surprise. _"Right to the last."_

"Willow?" Buffy asked uncertainly

"_And it is the last, you know? For all your fighting...thinking you're saving the world..."_

Dawn watched her sister. "Buffy?" she asked, receiving only a hand signal from a distracted Buffy to tell her to be quiet.

"_And in the end..."_ Willow continued. _"**I'm** the only one that can save it."_

"By killing us?" Buffy asked.

"_It's the only way to stop the pain. I can't take it anymore. But I know you, Buffy. You're a warrior. You won't go out without a fight. I don't really have time for one. But you should go out fighting."_

"Willow, what are you—"

"_It was me that took you out of the Earth. Well, now...the Earth wants you back."_

Suddenly, the ground beneath the sisters began to rumble loudly, scaring Dawn and unnerving Buffy after what she had just heard from the person who used to be her best friend. When she looked around, she saw it was for good reason. The walls that been containing them so adequately before, were now alive. Made up of the dirt and earth and rocks and vines, elemental creatures came at them from all directions.

* * *

Willow stood with her arms by her sides, concentrating on the effigy before her, focussing all of her energy on what she had planned. "Proserpexa...let the cleansing fires from the depths burn away the suffering souls and bring sweet death."

Lightening crackled between her and the statue fixed on the temple, lighting Willow's pale face with black veins, the ground beneath her shaking, wind that had come from nowhere whistling around her strongly as bolts of green energy shot from her body to the statue.

* * *

A light fixture fell from the ceiling of the Magic Box, making Anya duck her head at the resulting plaster and dust that fell from above, the ground shaking roughly beneath her as she kneeled beside him.

* * *

The rumbling went through the earth as Buffy and Dawn staggered around, the swords from earlier now in their hands as weapons against their new supernatural foe.

"Willow..." Buffy said nervously.

* * *

Anya felt the rumbling and shaking stop, and for a second she looked around, ready for it to begin again. She looked up, waiting for debris to crush her to death, then allowed her eyes to flicker over what was left of her shop, finally resting on Giles' unmoving body and closed eyes.

"Giles?" Anya said loudly. "Giles! Don't die," she told him tearfully. "Not yet. There-there are things I wanna tell you." She paused for a second, watching him and thinking. "Thanks a lot for coming," she told him. "It was good of you to teleport all this way."

Another tremor hit, making the rumbling start again, and Anya ducked her head, hiding her face in Giles' chest until it subsided. "Though in retrospect, it probably would have been better if you hadn't come and given Willow all that magic that made her like ten times more powerful," she said sadly. "That would have been a plus."

* * *

Green magic continued flowing from Willow toward the statue, the wind swirling around them, filling the air with dirt and debris and the ever-present lightning, while the statue glowed bright yellowy white in response.

Suddenly, without warning, the stream of magick that Willow had grown so fond of was interrupted, the glowing subsiding as the wind calmed, but it wasn't until the debris cleared that she saw why.

Tara.

"Hey, Sweetie," Tara told her, hands nervously on the waistband of the long skirt she was wearing. "Whatcha doin'?

There was no emotion in Willow's eyes as she looked upon the person she was supposed to be in love with. "Get out of here," she told her.

"Sorry," Tara said with a nervous shrug. "I can't. I mean, I thought I should be here."

"Why?" Willow asked bluntly. "You haven't understood anything else I've been trying to do." When Tara smiled, something in Willow ticked louder than before, and her face set. "Get out of my way. Now."

Before she knew what was happening, without thinking, a bolt of energy that was now becoming her staple flew from her hands and at Tara, lifting her off her feet and throwing her to the ground a few back, her body landing at the base of the statue.

* * *

The wrinkles on Giles' face seemed deeper, making him look a lot older than he actually was, the pallor of his pasty skin and the blood smears not doing him any favours at all. But, with most of his energy stolen from him, he knew it wasn't looking good for him. He had made his peace with that.

The Watcher in him, the part that had been instilled in him from an early age by his father, and, later, by people like Quentin Travers, wasn't ready to give up. At least not without some shred of hope still flaring to life in his old, beaten body. Dignified to the end, he hoped, like his predecessors, but the only person who could possible tell was the demon girl sat with him, cradling his head lightly.

It was this determination inside of himself that forced him to open his eyes, against all the messages his body was sending, telling him to just give in, but he swore to protect the world, once upon a time, and even if that world was coming a close sooner than expected, he was ready.

But hope still remained.

"There..." he whispered, his voice barely there at all after the trauma he had endured, but he caught Anya's surprised eye with his own.

"What?" she asked.

"It's not over..." he whispered with a small smile of hope, moving his hand to touch where Anya held his head.


	10. Chapter Ten

A/N: Well, it's done. Over. Finished. Finito...You know where I'm going with this. I really don't know why, but I'm incredibly nervous putting this out. Maybe it's because it just feels kinda final with it being the last part and I've spent so much time on it, ignored so many phone calls at work, nearly got fired...well, not really, but you get the picture. I also just wanted to point out that my feelings about the characters of Warren, Andrew and Jonathon do not reflect my thoughts about the actors who play them. I met them recently, and they are all just the sweetest people, ever. I kind of have a crush on Adam Busch now. Oh, and if anyone gets the chance, if you haven't already, check out his band Common Rotation. I've been listening to their CD's since I went to their gig last week, and they're just really addictive. As I've already been told, it's just another obsession for my collection.

* * *

Losing herself in the power was a feeling that this Willow relished entirely. With all the energy around her, she didn't have to think about anything. It's what she needed to do. Thinking made her angry, and angry wasn't going to get the job done. Her fury was being held in check by the promise of what was coming by her own hand, but soon that wouldn't matter at all when the green energy was shooting frantically from her fingertips at the statue. With the earth rumbling by her will, and the winds swirling around her, Willow felt at home, and she didn't much care for the person lying beneath the effigy she held so dear.

Tara's quiet determination was once something the redhead had admired in her girlfriend, when they were researching late at night and she wouldn't give up until they had found the demon of the week, or the right spell to vanquish said demon.

But now... Now it was just annoying, as she watched the blonde girl sit up at the base of the temple, an arm across her chest, holding her ribs as she interrupted the flow of magick once again. The energy stopped abruptly, reminding Willow of the hosepipe she and Xander had used once when they were fourteen, spraying each other with cascades of water. They had soaked each other thoroughly, until Jesse had stood on the pipe, making the liquid stop suddenly and abruptly, almost like it had never been there at all. Just like now.

"Why are you doing this?" Tara asked quietly.

"Because I can," Willow told her as she glared at Tara. "You can't stop this," she told her.

Tara nodded, uncertain but resolved. "I k-k-know that," she stammered out from behind the curtain on hair falling over her eyes, and as she tucked it back quickly, felt how knotted it had become, a weird thought in light of the situation. "It's just...where else would I go?" she asked honestly. "I mean, you're my only real link to Sunnydale," she told her. "No family here – what little of them I can actually tolerate – and no real friends other than the ones you brought into my life. You're my g-g-girlfriend..."

"Is this the master plan?" Willow asked scornfully. "You're gonna stop me by telling me you love me?"

"Well, I was going to tell you that I'm planning on buying a new cat, and that it would need two mommies," Tara said, "But I thought it might bring up a few too many memories of Miss Kitty meeting an unfortunate end with one of Dawn's awry crossbow shots."

"Joking, huh?" Willow sneered. "Not really one of your strong points."

"I'm just..." Tara said, shaking her head. "I'm not joking. I know you're in pain. I can't imagine the pain you're in. And I know you're about to do something really bad, but I still want to be here. You're Willow."

"Don't call me that!" she spat at Tara angrily. "I'm not," she told her. "Not anymore. I never will be again."

"Do you remember how nervous I was when we first started casting spells together?" Tara asked. Willow didn't respond, just kept her stance determined. "Magick can be scary and unpredictable, but with you...I wasn't afraid. I wasn't scared because you were there. I felt that connection between us, Willow, and it's never gone away."

"That's what you think..." Willow told her.

"It's what I **know**," Tara said adamantly. "In the hospital, after you were hurt...you used that connection to heal yourself. You weren't strong enough alone, and you needed me to help you."

"You think that mattered to me?" Willow asked, a smirk on her face. "You think that was love between us, Tara?" she asked. "It was me getting what I wanted from you. It wasn't **you** I wanted, it was your power," she said cruelly. "It was me doing whatever I had to so that I could go after those bastard murderers. I didn't care who the power came from, just that I had it."

"Look," Tara said desperately, "I know you've tasted evil, and—"

"I have," Willow confirmed with a bright smile, interrupting her. "You want to know what it tastes like? Surprisingly chalky."

"Willow..."

"I told you not to call me that!" Willow screamed at her. "You don't know Willow. You have no idea who she was, because if you did...you wouldn't be here."

"Listen to me—"

"No!" Willow told her. "**You** listen to **me**," she said. "Everything Willow ever was...was down to him...to Xander. Don't you get that?" she asked.

"That's not true. I know exactly who you are..."

"You can't," Willow told her. "You can't know because you weren't there when Willow was born. When that lonely, shy little girl became Willow."

"If you do this," Tara began, "do you know how many people you'll be hurting? The millions of lives you'll be destroying?"

"Yeah, thanks," Willow said. "I got the memo."

"He didn't define who you are, Willow," Tara said pleadingly. "I know he was a big part of your life...but you're Willow and he was Xander. I mean, your parents—"

"My parents?" Willow spat. "You think I care about them now?"

"You should," Tara told her. "They loved you. They wanted the best for you."

"Just because they didn't try to convince me I was a demon for 19 years of life they're suddenly Parents of the Year?" she said with a laugh. "They...they never understood me," Willow said bitterly. "They never even tried to. I mean, my mom...you met her. Everything's an essay paper to her. It always was. If she ever spent any time with me when I was younger, it was to study my behaviour so that she could talk to her next class about it. And dad...well, he pretty much kept to himself. You know, up until the age of three, I thought I had three parents. My mom and dad, and my babysitter, who practically lived with us. I thought that was normal.

"Then I met Xander..." she smiled to herself in spite of everything. "His parents were no better. They treated him like a slave, something to be at their beck and call most of the time. 'Xander, get this', or 'Xander, get that'. When we first met in pre-school, I was too shy to even talk to him. I was living this life that was so lonely, but I had never known anything else, and when I saw him...it's like the room filled with this amazing light and energy, and he just shone. I didn't think he would ever notice me. I didn't want him to, because I was sure he'd hate me. I thought he'd tease me, like Larry used to do to Cordelia, pull my hair and steal my toys. But he didn't. I don't even know what happened. I was alone, and then he was chattering away to me, like he'd known me forever. And that's how it felt. At that moment, I was so full and happy, not empty and alone like before. I looked at this boy beside me, and I knew he'd always be in my life.

"Things change over the years," she said wistfully. "I mean, you can try and keep them the same all you want, but that can't happen. **We** changed. One minute we were wrestling in the mud in my back yard, and the next we're at the eighth grade cotillion, wearing fancy dresses and clip on ties, and I'm worrying about whether or not I look pretty enough compared to all the other girls. One minute I'm normal, and the next minute I feel like a freak because I have a crush on my best friend.

"But I wasn't the centre of his universe anymore," Willow said sadly. "I was there, sure, but he had Jesse when we got to Junior High. He could do all the stuff with him that he couldn't do with me, which actually wasn't much, and I got to do all that girlie stuff with Amy.

"It never really lasted, though, us being separated. Adults came and went from our lives. Babysitters, aunts, uncles, grandparents...but we stayed together. He came to my door one night, about three weeks after we had started Junior High, with his sleeping bag and asked me to camp out in the back yard with him. That was something we had always done over the years, ever since I managed to convince my parents that we were responsible enough not to keep the neighbours awake all night.

"We'd lie there all night, talking about the good stuff, and not talking about the bad, like when my parents forgot my birthday, or when my grandfather died. Or when Xander's father stubbed out a cigarette on his back, or bruised his arm so bad he couldn't play ball for a week. We didn't need to talk about that stuff, because we both knew what happened. We just knew that if we were together, none of it could hurt us.

"We had always envied Buffy because of her relationship with her mother. Joyce took care of her, regardless of whatever Buffy had done, she loved her unconditionally, through everything. She took care of me and Xander, loved us like part of the family. My parents...I mean, they never meant to be cruel and they loved him like they loved me, but that wasn't saying much. I'm glad he knew in the end that not all parents were like his. That they could be nice and loving and do anything to make things better for you.

"When you grow up like we did," she explained, "not knowing who you're supposed to be...you cling to the one thing that makes you happy. You hold on to the one person who makes sense to you, who can make everything else disappear with just one adorable smile.

"I never thought Jesse and I would get along," Willow said. "I mean, he seemed like a nice enough guy, but I didn't think he liked me. He thought it was weird that me and Xander had been friends for so long, that we still spent so much time together, still slept over at each other's houses. But once I got to know him, he was pretty cool. He was a lot like Xander. He had that sense about him that you knew you could tell him anything, even though he used to tease me so much for how I felt about Xander. He said he knew it as soon as he saw me and him together.

"When Jesse died, something in Xander changed," Willow told Tara. "On the outside he was the same, happy, smiling, joking around. But I knew. I saw it in his eyes. Everything changed so suddenly. One day we're discussing which brand of hot chocolate is the best, and the next we're getting attacked by vampires.

"I don't think it really hit me about Jesse being gone," she said thoughtfully. "It was one night when I was on the phone to Xander, and we were talking about everything we'd done that day, which was a lot compared to what we were used to. Pop quiz in the morning, studying in the afternoon, fending off an end of the world attempt by vampires at the Bronze in the evening... I think I cracked some kind of joke about Jesse's crush on Cordelia, and I just lost it. I was crying so hard I didn't think I'd ever stop. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't talk. I just sat there in my room, sobbing, with the phone in my hand.

"But, then...there was Xander," she said. "He ran all the way from his house with a cross in his hand let himself in my door with the key he'd had since he was eight. He held me for so long that night, and we both cried for our friend. When the sun came up, when it was just barely light, we went out to say goodbye to him. We walked to a little park that was around the corner from Sunnydale High, and we dug a little hole in the ground, and we put in some pictures and some other bits and pieces, and we stood there for hours. We talked about what had happened to Jesse, and what we were going to tell his parents. I wanted to tell them the truth, but Xander knew it would only hurt them, and he said we had to let the police take care of it.

"After, when everything had died down, Jesse's parents had a little memorial service for him. There weren't many people there, which was really sad, 'cause Jesse was such an amazing guy. Xander grew up so fast when that happened. He had always been so carefree, despite his family life and everything else, and you couldn't tell unless you really looked at him, but his eyes...they were so much older than they had been before. They carried so much guilt that he hadn't been able to stop Jesse being taken, and even more about being the one who staked him when the time came.

"He only really talked about it to me once, though. One night when we went to the park to say hi to Jesse, which we did maybe once a week or so. He told me that he never wanted to go through that again, and he made me promise that I'd never leave him, because he said that he wouldn't be able to make it without me. I just thought it was the sweetest thing that he wanted me around, but I still made him promise the same. He said that he wouldn't leave me, not even if he tried, because he physically couldn't.

"See, with me and Xander," she explained. "We didn't grow up like other kids did, with their parents telling them what was right and wrong, and giving them curfews and rules. We just had each other. When I was being teased in the playground, Xander would tell me that I had to ignore them, because then they'd see that they couldn't bother me and get bored. When Xander came to school with a bruise on his arm where his father had taken his bad mood out on him, I told him to sleep over at my house and go home when his father was on a rare day at work. We were together through everything that life and our families threw at us, and we didn't care, because when we were together, nothing could hurt us.

"When Buffy came into our lives, I was so glad to finally have a real female friend. Amy and I had drifted, and it was nice to talk to someone about the girlie stuff. But a part of me hated Buffy, and a part of me always will, for being a part of the reason he changed. She had gotten us into that part of her life with all the supernatural stuff. I know you could argue that we would have been dead if she hadn't come along when she did, but see, I know that if we had died, we'd have done that together, too."

"Willow," Tara said gently. "We can get through this together, me and you. If you can just—"

Willow looked at Tara with emptiness in her eyes. "Do you have any idea how in love with him I was?" she asked. "Of course you don't," she said, shaking her head. "I would have done anything for him, just to get him to notice I was alive. I think he did. Eventually. The last summer we spent together, just him and me, just after sophomore year when Buffy was with her father, I had resolved to tell him how I felt. I knew he thought he was in love with Buffy, but I never thought it was real. Every day we spent together, I told myself that I'd do it later, or I'd do it the day after because we had all summer. But then, suddenly, we'd spent every waking moment together and we were going to be back at school in a few days.

"I told myself that it wasn't meant to be," she said sadly. "I knew he'd never be interested in me...not like with Buffy. She was all blond hair and perfect skin and perfect figure, and I was all stupid bright red hair, freckly and pale, with a body that I hid under baggy overalls and shirts. But something happened one night. We were just hanging out together, talking, playing games, and then, his face was inches in front of him and he was about to kiss me. I wanted to freeze that moment in time forever. For me, everything I had ever wanted was so close, so when it was snatched away with a vampire making its appearance I was ready to jump on it and stake it myself. I was sure something changed between us in that moment, because he couldn't forget about, could he? But he did. One look at Buffy and he was gone again.

"I felt like I didn't exist anymore," she said. "I mean, I was there, but I wasn't his best friend anymore. Yes, I was jealous of them, the way he'd do anything for her and all she had to do was say the word. I was jealous because he just let her order him around, slaying-wise or not, and he'd fall in step with her without a word of argument. I listened to it day after day, 'Buffy was so great when she did this...' or 'Buffy was so cool when this happened...'

"When Oz came along, everything was a new experience. I don't mean the physical stuff. I just mean...having someone look at me and really **see** me, you know? Having someone who wanted to be around me, who listened to everything I had to say, who wanted to be close to me and thought I wasn't entirely dog-like. Having him around made it easier not to love Xander. I still did it, because I couldn't help it, but it just...got a little easier. Xander had broken my heart pretty much every day since I'd known him in one way or another, but Oz helped to fix it.

"Of course, Xander was jealous," she said with a smirk. "I mean, he was used to being the number one guy in my life, whether he acknowledged it or not, and now he was being sidelined. I didn't get the jealousy thing. He and Cordelia were...I don't know, making out in supply closets or whatever, so he had already pushed me to the back of his mind, so I didn't know what the problem was. I guessed it had something to do with the fact that everything was changing. We were changing. Becoming different people. Not living in each other's pockets anymore. Growing apart.

"Maybe that was why, when all of that stuff happened in senior year with the fluking and everything, we didn't quit when we had the chance," she said sadly. "We were both so afraid of losing each other that we found a new way to be close. There was curiosity there, too, of course. I mean, he was an eighteen-year-old boy full of hormones, looking at linoleum made him horny. But for me...having the one thing I had wanted, dreamed about for so long...it was like a dream. I felt guilty, sure, every time I looked at Oz or Cordelia. But feeling what I had missed out on for so long, having Xander want me, too...it didn't feel like it was real, and that was all the excuse I needed not to end it until I was forced to. I had what I had always wanted, but I knew I didn't really have it, you know?

"I think that's why it hurt so much when he slept with Faith," she said pensively. "Because up until then, there had always been this flicker of hope in my heart that one day...I don't know, that we'd get a happy ending somewhere down the line. When I looked into the future, all I saw was him. All I wanted was him. I had Oz, but that wasn't the same. He was sweet and nice and comfortable and when he kissed me I was happy. But there was no fire there. It was nothing like what I felt with Xander. I had wanted him for so long, it was hot and passionate and uncontrollable and mind numbing, but he didn't want me.

"Faith was like the final straw that broke Willow's back. What he did with her horrified me. Not just because of the act itself, but I thought he was better than that. But then, there's the aforementioned linoleum thing, so I guess it's not that surprising. After that, I couldn't let him in anymore, not like before. I kept him at a distance, hardened myself to the way he used to look at me and smile and talk about when we were kids. After that, I put all of the feelings that I had for him in a non-best-friend way into a little box inside myself, and swore I'd never open it up again.

"All of those years of hoping and praying..." she said slowly. "It was like they were just the run-up to the main event, you know. The rehearsals for when my heart did actually break, that moment when I sobbed to myself in the stall of the girl's bathroom. I didn't think anything would ever hurt as much as that did. I loved him, but he didn't love me, and never would."

Tara had been listening to her, because if this was what she needed to do to be okay, she'd do it gladly. Somehow, though, this was about more than giving her a history lesson. What was scaring her the most was the look in Willow's eyes, empty and glassy and glaring, and the way her voice sounded almost emotionless and cold, like this person in front of her was a totally different person to the girl she knew like she was talking about someone else. But she couldn't give up.

"H-He did love you," Tara told her, tears in her eyes welling with sadness. "I know he did."

"Oh, yeah?" Willow asked, stepping forward a little, swaggering as she stared the other girl down. "You two were such good buddies? How could you know that?"

"Because I saw it..." Tara told her gently. "I s-s-saw...the way his eyes softened when he looked at you... The way he smiled when you talked to just him... The way, when he spoke, he always used to flail his arms around," she said with a smile, "Except for when he was around you. When you were there he was calmer, like you were the thing that kept him grounded. I saw the way he was so protective of you when we first started out. He'd be nice, polite, make conversation...but always making sure that you were okay by hanging around when he should have been at work, or when he was supposed to have plans with Anya, keeping himself busy and finding something to do so he could be near you for just a few extra minutes. I saw the way he'd sit beside you with a smile that I only ever saw when he was with you, finding any excuse to just touch your arm, or hold your hand, sometimes without even noticing it, just because it was the most natural thing in the world to do because he'd been doing it for so long. It was obvious to anyone who saw you together."

"Whatever," Willow said, shaking her head. "Not really looking for validation from you right now."

"There are so many different variations of the feeling," Tara said, almost like she was explaining the concept to a young child. "There's the sibling kind of love, a parental kind of love, a friendship kind of love...and there's the intensity of feeling like you'll never be able to live without someone because you're **in** love with them."

"You planning on pulling out a pie chart on me?" Willow sneered.

"He loved you in every single way there was, and deep inside, you know that, and you loved him the same way."

Willow cocked an eyebrow, maliciousness on her face. "You think?" she asked sarcastically.

"I know," Tara said sincerely. "I've always known that about you, Willow, and I've never wished any different. When we first met, you had this powerful love in your aura, but I never really knew what it was for, **who** it was for, until I met Xander."

"He may have loved me," Willow told her, "but not like I loved him. If he did, he wouldn't have just died like that. He would've thought of me, like I'm thinking of him before I die."

"Willow—"

"He told me once..." Willow said suddenly. At Tara's blank stare, she continued. "That he loved me," she informed her. "And in more than a Sorry-I-Stole-Your-Barbie kind of way. He never thought I'd heard him, and for a long time I didn't even realise. I was really confused at the time, what with the head trauma and being in a coma, but he told me. I wanted it to be him so badly, because I'd had so many dreams that one day he'd say those words and really mean them and it'd all be perfect. But I just didn't believe it was possible, you know. Oz had been the only guy to ever show any interest, so it wasn't a great leap to put two and two together and come up with a guitarist.

"When you and I went our separate ways a couple of months ago," Willow told her. "I was feeling pretty low, what with being dumped and all. I just wanted to make myself feel better. I needed to know that my life hadn't been a series of disasters, so I conjured a spell. It wasn't anything major – at least, not major for me. It was just a little look-see into my past. I wanted to see the happiest moments of my life, and one of those moments was the first time anyone had told me they loved me in a non-platonic kind of way. The thing was that, instead of helping me remember them clearly, it showed me them, like I was the viewer of a really peculiar sounding television show and I was watching with an audience."

"Did you ever tell him you knew?" Tara asked.

Willow's eyes widened incredulously, the corners of her mouth pulled into a smirk. "What do you think?"

"Maybe you should have done."

"Yeah, hindsight's great," Willow commented.

"He must have known that you'd figure it out one day," Tara said. "In your heart, you know that it isn't just those words that tell how someone feels about you. It's about how you act around them...the things you do for them... You can't hide that stuff. He loved you, and he showed you everyday, whether it was a small gesture like giving you the last piece of his candy, or whether it was something like saving your life."

"I don't know anything in my heart, because I don't have a heart anymore," Willow told her. "It's broken, and it'll never fix." She shook her head against everything that was running through her mind. "And I'm angry at him for that. I'm angry because every time I think of him, I see his cold, dead body lying on the ground instead of how happy he made me, and that's never going to go away. I never thought it was possible to feel like you don't exist anymore. I hate him for leaving me."

"Willow, he saved Buffy's life," Tara pointed out. "He didn't die intentionally."

"Yes, he did," Willow said. "He saw that bullet, and in that split second, he thought that saving Buffy was more important than anything else. Something told him that was the right thing to do. He thought he was doing the world a favour. He did it because he'd rather die than see anyone else he cared about go through the pain of losing her again. He always thought of everyone else before himself, wanted to make them happy. But he didn't think about what he was doing to everyone else by just leaving us like that. He didn't think how we'd feel to lose **him**. He never thought how **I'd** feel. He just left me here, without saying goodbye, without...anything, when he promised he never would.

"So do you think this is what he'd want you to do?" Tara asked. "Give up and destroy everything you've worked so hard to save?"

"You didn't know him," Willow spat. "Don't talk about him like you did."

"I know what you told me about him," Tara said back. "That was enough. I know that he was your best friend."

"I don't think **he** did..." Willow said quietly. "After I pushed him away...I don't think he ever really knew that for sure. He'd say it, but when he looked at me sometimes...I saw him missing me. But I couldn't let him be that close to me anymore. Even when Oz left, he was the only person I wanted there with me. I wanted to have him hold me and tell me everything was going to be okay, like he did when my grandfather died when I was fifteen. But I felt like there was so much I had missed out on. He had been away for a whole summer, and when he came back, he was all grown up. I wondered when that had happened, why I had missed it. And then, just when I reached over to grab the phone to call him...I'd remember that it was my fault.

"After Oz was gone...I thought about Xander all the time. I mean, a **lot**. Times when I was so upset that I'd been left all alone, I'd think of Xander instead of Oz, and it was just so confusing. I was the one who had instigated the separation of our friendship, and because I'd been with Oz so much before, I was mourning it. I wanted to turn back time to when it was all so much easier, to stay lost in those memories forever, but reality gave me a giant kick in the ass. I think some part of me...some deep down, repressed part of me, thought that now Oz was gone - the person I had been so afraid of hurting again - maybe we could've... But there was Anya, and then you."

Tara smiled fondly at her. "And is that such a bad thing?"

"Yes," Willow said.

"Why?"

"Because...that was the final nail in the coffin," Willow told her. "He was supposed to be my best friend. He was supposed to be the one person who knew me inside and out, no matter what. He had done so much for me, made me the person that I was... And I didn't even tell him what was happening to me."

"Why not?"

"I was scared," Willow said. "I was having these strong, deep feelings for someone who he had barely even met. For someone he never would have expected me to fall for. I didn't want to make him feel awkward, and I wanted him to be proud of me."

"You don't think he was?"

"He was," Willow said. "But admitting how I felt about you to him...it was like saying that I never really loved him."

"Why would you think that?"

"Because if I loved you, if I was all 'gay now', it meant that I was never really totally happy with Oz, and that I was never in love with the guy who had been my best friend since Pre-K. It meant that there was never going to be another chance for him and me ever again. It felt like I had been lying to him, and that was something I couldn't forgive myself for, so instead of trying to be his best friend, I kept pushing him away. I let the void grow between us all because then they didn't have to know. I was never ashamed of what I felt, but I didn't want things to change even more between him and me. So...because I was so selfish...because I didn't have the guts to tell him that I had found someone new...he found out during an argument, when everyone was angry and yelling. This was something huge, and I never told him, and it hurt him."

"He understood."

"He felt like he was a spectator in my life," Willow said harshly. "Not a part of it. For so long it had been just us. He was mine and I was his, and it was so simple. We belonged to each other. But somewhere along the line...we lost that."

"Just because you forget about something, it doesn't mean it stops being yours," Tara said softly. "He knew how important he was to you. He knew you'd always be there for him."

"He didn't," Willow said with a cruel laugh. "We lived separate lives, and the weird thing was that I don't think we barely noticed. Things were strange between us. We still talked, laughed at his dumb jokes, but it was like there was a shift and it was just about the comfort of being with someone familiar. It never seemed like we got the chance to talk about us, our friendship.

"Maybe if we had...he wouldn't have gone through so much when he decided not to marry Anya," she said thoughtfully. "I know that he loved her, there was never any question of that, but I saw what he had to grow up with. I saw the only real example of married life he had. When he told us he was getting married...I should have taken the time to talk about it with him. See, he was having doubts even then, but he never really told anyone. He coped with it on his own. All those months leading up to the wedding...and I was too busy getting my magick on to see how much pain he was in. I didn't see just how much it was tearing him up inside.

"When we were kids, he used to tell me that he never wanted to be like his parents. That he'd make sure that he knew for certain that he was doing the right thing. Till he knew he could be a better person that his father had been, and wouldn't put anyone through what he had seen his mother cope with. I should have been the one person he could have come to, but instead I find out in the middle of a huge brawl that he couldn't do it. I guess I know how he felt that time at Giles', huh?

"Oz once said that being without me was like losing a limb, or a torso...but I never really understood what he meant by that until now."

"Please..." Tara said sadly. "Don't..."

"Tara, just leave me alone," Willow told her, sounding weary and bored. "This has nothing to do with you."

"You're about to end the world that I live in," Tara pointed out.

"Well, you know, apart from that..."

"I can't leave," Tara told her solemnly. "Not when I'm part of the reason you're standing here with all of this power."

"Don't flatter yourself."

"I'm serious," Tara told her. "When we met...I saw all of this power in you, and it was bright and wonderful and I could see that you had the potential for so much. I never stopped to realise that might be a bad thing someday. I encouraged you with your Magicks. I helped you. I gave you books, blessings, crystals, and candles and turned a blind eye to some of the things you did, like when Dawn wanted to raise Mrs Summers. I let you do things that I didn't agree with...because I wanted to see how far you could reach. I never had that natural ability like you. I had power, sure, because I inherited from my mom, but you...it was like you were born for it. I never saw how dangerous it was until it was too late, until I'd fallen for you so hard it felt like I'd never hit the ground again."

"Yeah," Willow told her. "You **did **encourage it. You **wanted** it, Tara, until it got too much for you. I was better than you, and when you realised you couldn't coast by on my power, you bailed. You're such a hypocrite, just like Giles. The only reason you're here now...it's because you feel guilty, because all of the time we were together you were jealous, and this is just a way to make yourself feel better."

Tara nodded, brushing her hair from her face. "So, I'm partly responsible for this, so I should be here."

"Oh, please!" Willow yelled at her. "Give me a break."

"One night," Tara began, determinedly, "You came to my door with a rose and a spell. We sat on the floor together and we held hands and we channelled our energies into something beautiful. I'm here because the beautiful, redheaded girl I fell in love with is inside that dark body somewhere, and I want to get her back. Underneath all of the black hair, and dark veins and empty eyes, you're still Willow."

Willow looked on at the other girl, more than thoughtful at her words. "No," she said slowly. "I'm not," she told her. "Not anymore. I'm not anyone anymore. Xander's gone...and so is Willow. Nothing makes sense. It's all gone...it's all pain and suffering and death...everywhere. That's why all of this has to end."

"You know..." Tara began. "You're seeming awful chatty for someone who wants to kill everything in existence. I can't help but think you're stalling, and I know why."

"Oh, yeah?" Willow asked, amused. "Why's that?"

"Because you can still feel it," Tara told her. "You can still feel that connection between us. The thing that's kept us together through everything. I still feel it, Willow."

This time, Willow did laugh, a cruel and harsh sound in the morning light. "That's what you think?" she asked. "This isn't connecting, Tara," she said, sneering at her. "This has nothing to do with you. I'm not up here explaining myself to you, why I'm doing this... You don't matter to me anymore." She looked at her with only the tiniest trace of emotion in her eyes. "This is about me trying to get back some of what I lost..." she told her. "This is about me wanting my last thoughts on this earth, my last memories of this life...to be of him."

"That means you'll be killing me, too," Tara informed her. "You think you can do that?"

"Not a problem."

"You saved my life yesterday."

"Right now, kinda wishing I hadn't."

"So you're just willing to let me die?"

"Pretty much."

"Please..." Tara begged. "Don't do this..."

Then, risking everything, risking incurring Willow's wrath further, she stepped forward. "I love you," she said sincerely.

Willow's face folded in anger. "Shut up!" she told her through clenched teeth, reaching out and gesturing with her hand wildly, intent on her face.

No magic bolts came from her outstretched fingers this time, but Tara felt her head jerk to the side, as if she'd received a physical blow to the face from her. She put a hand to her cheek where a searing pain had begun, feeling the outlines of three deep, parallel cuts on her face, and she looked at Willow in shock.

Tara could see a change in Willow, something almost invisible to anyone who didn't know her, but she was feeling something. Opposite her, the former redhead was watching, arms at her sides, panting in what seemed like nervousness as Tara's eyes sought out the other girl.

"I love you," she told her again, resolute and certain.

Willow made another wild gesture, the result of which made Tara double over and fall to her knees on the dry land of the Bluff, an arm across her chest. When she stood, panting with the pain coursing through her body, her hand barely covered the three parallel cuts that had appeared on her chest, visible through the now-torn sweater she was wearing.

When Tara stood once more, she grimaced in pain, but determined to do this, facing Willow, panting to catch her breath. "I...love...you—"

"Shut up!" Willow yelled angrily, more expression in her voice and face than had been seen since this whole thing had begun, and throwing a bolt of energy at Tara.

When the magic hit her, it made Tara stagger, but she didn't fall with the force. There was none of the power behind it that she had felt earlier, and this gave her hope.

Willow's hand was still out in front of her, ready to deliver another blow to the person standing in her way, but this had surprised her. A little magical energy crackled around her hand and fingers, her weapon of choice, obviously not performing how she expected. She looked down at her hands, anxious and panicked, thoughts whirling through her head and throwing her off balance mentally.

Tara saw her chance, and slowly moved towards Willow, something that seemed to unnerve the witch even more.

"I love you, Willow..." Tara told her honestly.

"Stop!" Willow screamed at her, sending another blast her way, but with the power from Giles in her fading, it barely even touched Tara, not hurting her but making her flinch, the uselessness she was now feeling making her tear up in frustration and pain.

She saw Tara still walking towards her slowly in that non-threatening way she had, but all she wanted was to keep her away. She continued to hold her hands out in front of her, still hoping for the magic to come back to her, to get her away from anything that might make her feel again, because that was the one thing she couldn't bear.

"I love you..." Tara said again.

"Stop!" Willow told her, tears now springing to her eyes and making her cry as she found Tara now directly in front of her. She balled her hands into fists, fury and grief overtaking her as she began to sob, bringing her hands to Tara's chest and hitting the girl wearily, hardly any weight behind the blows as she pounded on her, Tara letting her do whatever she needed to do.

Then, as it all became too much, and she was overcome by the pain she felt, she stopped hitting her and just sobbed, crying for everything she had lost from her life, lost that would never come back to her. She felt it overwhelm her and she began to fall to her knees, Tara right there with her the whole time, catching her in her arms and sinking to the floor with her, holding her there on the hard ground in the early morning sun.

"I love you..." Tara told her as Willow continued to sob in her arms, heartbroken cries that touched Tara's heart, making her cry the tears that had been threatening to envelop her since she had seen Xander's cold body lying on the ground.

Relief overwhelmed her when she saw Willow's hair fade from the pitch black back to her natural, beautiful red, and her face as porcelain as it had been before any of this, her eyes back from the ebony depths to their natural emerald state.

She held her there for who knows how long. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. But when little Willow's wrecked body finally ceased its crying, and the sobs no longer shook her tiny, frail, spent form, Tara held her tighter, vowing to do whatever it took to fix Willow again, to make her what she was, even though there was still a tiny part of her that knew that could never be.

Everything that Willow had told her...that all she ever was came from him...she knew that some of that had to be true. She loved Willow completely, and that would never change, but if this event caused her to change so drastically, what would become of them now?

He had been such a huge, influential part of her life, the extent of which Tara had never realised before. She had known that Willow's power was more than what either of them could have imagined, but she never thought it would have corrupted someone so good. No one could have foreseen that the power would have taken over her completely, but no one could have foreseen his death. It scared her to think how this had affected Willow.

It wasn't just the tired bundle she held in her arms she worried for, it was the future of the girls well being. She had been prepared to end everything just so that she didn't have to live in a world without him in it. She had gone to extremes to end her own suffering, and everyone else's that she claimed to be able to feel, and she had killed people. She worried over how Willow would ever get through this. If the grief didn't get to her, the guilt almost certainly would.

The world had lived, but what of Willow?

Accepting the fact that Willow was never going to be the same again was something Tara was simply not prepared to do.

"It's okay, sweetie," Tara whispered into Willow's tangled hair, gently kissing the crown of her head. "Everything's going to be okay. I love you..." She felt Willow pull out of her embrace, and moved her arms from around the girl's body to her face. She took her face in her palms, Willow's skin cold and damp from crying, but it still felt like Willow-skin so it was okay. She took a long hard look at her, thanking whatever goddess there was out there that she had come back to her.

But Willow looked haunted. She looked like she had given up. Her face was so sallow and pale, it made her look almost inhuman, like an ethereal being visiting the earth. Her body, had anyone been paying attention, would have thought this girl had completed a gauntlet, or a thousand years in a hell dimension, it sagged so against Tara. She could barely lift her arms to steady herself on the other girl, barely keep her eyes open and focussed she felt so completely drained and exhausted.

"He's everywhere, Tara," Willow told her sadly and quietly, her voice catching with the tears that she still held inside. "Everywhere I look, everywhere I go...there's a memory. There's a reminder of him attached to everything here. I don't think I can take it..."

"You can," Tara told her. "You're stronger than that, Willow. You don't have to give up. You're an Amazon, remember?"

"I'm not..." Willow told her, shaking her head as more tears filled her eyes and she put her head down in defeat.

"You are," she told her resolutely, using the hold she still had on her face to force her to make eye contact again, needing her to know that she would do anything to make this better. "It's all going to be okay..." Tara repeated to her, her voice strong, tears falling down her cheeks in a melee of different emotions. "I love you so much..."

A ghost of a smile formed on Willow's face, the corners of her mouth turning up ever so slightly as she gently nodded her head. "I know," she whispered. "I love you, too..."

Everything that Tara had been feeling disappeared as she felt her face light up with relief and some happiness. She had been worried what would happen in the next few hours, days, weeks, months...but somehow, none of that mattered right now. She resolved to think about that when the time came. For now, things were far from perfect. Her girlfriend was hurting so badly it had been a physical thing for her, but they had gotten through it. They had done it together. It was all going to work out.

"...But it's not enough..." Willow continued.

As Tara's eyes widened in horror and her mouth fell open with words that wouldn't come to her, Willow used every little bit of strength that her body still possessed, which wasn't much. She pulled away from Tara completely, leaving the other girl kneeling on the ground in bewilderment. She ignored the pain shooting through her spent limbs and broken heart, and, steadying herself with her shaking hands against the hard ground, she forced herself to her feet.

She stumbled, staggered, as Tara looked at her, eyes wide in denial as she let her eyes find the effigy on the temple a few feet away from her, flickering from the statue back to Tara briefly. "I'm sorry..." she whispered.

"No..." Tara said to herself, frozen to the spot as a cold chill seeped into her heart, hardly able to believe this was happening, sobs catching in her throat. "No..."

But Willow stood unsteadily, holding her hands out in front of her, palms up and fingers outstretched. She looked different to how she had been when she'd done this a little while ago. She had been an entity so consumed with vengeance and grief that it had changed her, turned her into something dark and evil and different.

Now, though...she wasn't any of those things. She was Willow, with her red hair and green eyes and a penchant for fuzzy sweaters. That's why it meant more now. Why Tara was so stunned and wasn't making any attempt to stop her - yet.

The purple bolts of energy shot from her with hardly any encouragement at all, power summoning itself from within, knowing its purpose, power she didn't know she still had, more than any she could have stolen from anyone else as she realised that this was what it had all been for.

No one could have known how powerful she was going to get back when she had cast that very first spell to restore Angel's soul. That was the thing...no one was **supposed** to know. Everyone had been so worried about the effects it had on her, about the power that could consume her at any time.

If you believed that everything was pre-destined, it was why Angel had entered Buffy's life when he did. Why they had fallen in love so deeply and consummated that love with something so sacred and beautiful to them. It was because Angelus needed to be brought forward, why he had killed Jenny. It was why Willow had to delve into Magick to bring him back. It was why she'd never known before that Xander loved her. It was why she had met Tara, to learn from her and to let herself be guided by her.

Right now...this moment in time... **This** was why she had it. **This** was why she had been given it.

She had felt the weight of the world's emotions on her shoulders. She had felt pain and suffering and grief from every corner of the world and Tara had brought her back from it. The thought of all of those souls so tortured had almost been too much to bear, but she had done it.

It turned out that the pain she couldn't take was her own.

Her power and energy hit the effigy, suffusing the statue in a brilliant glow, the sound crackling in her ears and the brightness of the lightening bolts filling the air, making her close her tired eyes against it.

The last thing she saw was the perfectly preserved image of Xander in her mind, looking like he had the first day they met, all mussed-up brown hair and brown eyes and adorable smile, his hand held out to her.

The last thing she heard was him calling her name, calling out to her and telling her that they were going to be together again and that everything would be okay.

The last thing she felt was her heart aching for him, yearning to be near him again.

Then she felt nothing at all.

The world was on fire.

The End

* * *

**Authors Notes 2**

See? All those people who, when the first few parts came out, said they were looking forward to seeing where I went with this, I told you it wasn't up to such anticipation.

This piece of fanfiction is something that has been very special to me. I tend to base a lot of my work on scenes or dialogue from the original episodes, and this idea just kinda came to me while I was reading another piece a while back. It started off as a monologue piece that was going to be from Willow's POV, with the changes I've made being described. In the end, I figured that wouldn't really work, both from my perspective as the author and as a reader. It wouldn't have held much interest for anyone, and I probably would have gotten bored writing it. It was never meant to be as long as this, and was never meant to contain as much transcribed stuff. The problem I found was that only briefly mentioning events made it hard to follow the story, even if you remembered the original events. This piece has taken me something like six months to complete. That's six months of my life thinking, and writing and editing this. That's a lot of time.

I was trying to make specific points with this piece. Whether or not those points are plausible or made boldly enough, I'm not sure. The feeling I was going for with this was, we know Willow loved Tara. But she loved Xander, too, in a deeper way than anyone could have imagined. I just got to thinking...what if it had been Xander on the ouchy end of the bullet? I was trying to get across that Willow probably would have tried to bring any of the gang back, barring Spike, but it would have stopped there. She would have followed the same path she went down with Tara's loss, but there may have been various events that she would have done differently. I wanted to bring out how connected the two characters were, how intertwined their lives were, even if they hadn't known it before. Not only that, but the power Willow has would have fed her grief, and that has a lot to do with her reaction. Season 2 Willow would have been devastated, but she maybe wouldn't have ended the world. I know that, compared to the original s6 stuff, it may seem unusual that Willow spends so much time talking when she's on the Bluff. I had to put this in to make sure that Tara could understand exactly what was going through Willow's mind. As I stated above, Willow talking about their life together was a way of re-living it, and wanting her last thoughts to be about him.

What had been sorely missed, in my opinion, was the friendship angle that the show had been based around so much in the first few seasons. There are always going to be things that a viewer doesn't agree with, that they wish had been done differently. Thankfully, there's fanfiction to release those frustrations.

If you've actually read all of this, you have my deepest sympathies. It wasn't a bunnies and fluffy clouds ending, but it was the only one I could have imagined in this scenario.

Thanks for reading, and the reviews that I've received have been a great source of confidence and motivation.

Lysa


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